A 32-year veteran public school teacher who has displayed a crucifix beside her desk for the past 10 years has been placed on leave in Connecticut for refusing to remove the cross.
Marisol Castro, a devout Catholic who teaches at DiLoreto Elementary & Middle School in New Britain, was suspended without pay and threatened with termination over the crucifix.
A teacher was SUSPENDED for displaying a small crucifix next to her desk! First Liberty is stepping in to stop this discrimination.
— First Liberty Institute (@1stLiberty) January 27, 2025
Connecticut schoolteacher Marisol Arroyo-Castro was suspended without pay and placed on administrative leave for displaying a small crucifix… pic.twitter.com/pd9ZpmHvjk
According to First Liberty Institute, which is representing Castro, the crucifix “reminds her to pray and helps her remain calm throughout the day as she faithfully teaches her students.”
In early December, the legal organization reports, the vice principal of Castro’s school called her into a meeting, informing her that if she did not remove the crucifix by 8:00 a.m. the following Monday morning, she would be charged with insubordination.
The vice principal reportedly followed up with an email to the teacher that read, “During the meeting, …I shared that any permanent displays of religious symbols are prohibited from public schools, based on the First Amendment of the United States Constitution.”
During a meeting four days later with the principal, vice principal, chief of staff, and a union representative, First Liberty reported the principal told Castro that her crucifix was just an idol, a statement that offended the teacher.
“The chief of staff suggested she put the crucifix in a drawer, but Marisol explained that she would feel bad, like she was putting Jesus in a drawer,” First Liberty continued. “The union rep suggested a compromise: move the crucifix to a place where the students won’t see it.”
“The group went to her classroom and told her to move the crucifix under her desk,” First Liberty reported. “After she did so, Marisol started to sob, feeling as though she ‘hid it under a bushel,’ rather than letting her light shine. After many tears and prayer, she felt her sincere beliefs would be violated by following the school’s directives, so the next day she returned the crucifix to its original location.”
Castro informed the district of her decision, but her action was declared “insubordinate.”
Upon visiting her classroom, the principal again told her to remove the crucifix, arguing that to do so would be to “live out [her] faith” and “give Caesar what is Caesar’s.”
According to a demand letter sent by First Liberty and law firm WilmerHale to Superintendent Dr. Anthony Gasper and the board of directors of the school district, Castro “has regularly received ‘proficient’ or ‘exemplary’ evaluations” for her work in the district.
The chief of staff, nevertheless, told Castro that “a few days without pay would help her better ‘reflect’ on whether it was in her ‘best interest’ to keep hanging the crucifix on the wall,” the letter also noted, adding that Castro was subsequently suspended without pay for two days for being insubordinate and “sent home with her crucifix in a box.”
Meanwhile, “[i]n the personal space next to their desks, other teachers display photos of family and friends, images of Wonder Woman and Baby Yoda, a miniature of the Mona Lisa, New England Patriots football team pennant, inspirational quotes, a photograph of a statue of the Virgin Mary, and a mug referencing a Bible verse,” the legal organization further explained.
“The Establishment Clause does not enable the District to violate Ms. Castro’s right to freely exercise her religion,” the demand letter informed the district.
“Multiple times over the past month, however, the District has said that it was concerned that Ms. Castro’s hanging of her crucifix violated other provisions of the federal Constitution,” the letter explained. “In meetings and written communications, it stated that Ms. Castro hanging her cross on the wall near her desk posed the risk of appearing to observers that she favored Christian over non-Christian students or that the school endorsed Christian beliefs, in violation of the Establishment Cause … The District cited this concern in ultimately punishing Ms. Castro for exercising her right to freely express her religious faith.”
The letter cited the case of Kennedy v. Bremerton School District, in which the U.S. Supreme Court “recently dispelled the ‘false choice’ between the Establishment Clause and the Free Exercise Clause.”
In that case, “the Supreme Court held that a public school football coach could not be fired on Establishment Clause grounds for engaging in personal prayer, even when he did so visibly at the 50-yard line of the stadium after home games,” First Liberty and WilmerHale wrote. “In both Kennedy and here, the demand to completely suppress from view religious expression proved an unreasonable burden on deeply held convictions: Coach Kennedy knew acquiescing would break his ‘commitment to God,’ … just as Ms. Castro knew complying would force her to ‘hide her light under a bushel.’”
“In short,” they added, “given the similarities between the facts of Kennedy as those here, the same principles at work in Kennedy protect Ms. Castro’s right to display her crucifix.”
To avoid litigation, the letter demanded the district immediately reinstate Castro to full-time teaching and end “all disciplinary proceedings against her related to this matter.”
Additionally, Castro “must be allowed to resume hanging her crucifix in the same location that she did prior, as other teachers are permitted to do with their personally significant items.”
“Requiring a teacher to purge their workspace of anything religious is blatant hostility that violates the First Amendment,” Keisha Russell, senior counsel at First Liberty, said in a statement. “The Supreme Court said in the recent Kennedy decision that teachers have the right to engage in personal religious expression under the Free Exercise Clause, including when students are present.”