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Lawsuit: Boy not allowed to dress as Jesus

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ABINGTON, Pa., Feb. 23 (UPI) -- A family has filed a lawsuit against the Abington, Pa., school district, which forbade a boy from wearing his Jesus costume in a Halloween parade.

Donna Brewer said her 10-year-old son, identified by the initials E.D.T., was not allowed to wear his paper-and-twig crown of thorns with his white robe during the school parade, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported Friday.

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The suit says the boy was told by the principal of Willow Hill Elementary he could wear the robe alone and say he was a Roman emperor.

"They explicitly discriminated against Christianity," said Matt Bowman, a lawyer with the Alliance Defense Fund, which is representing the family. "They attacked the right to free religious exercise.

"And they gave unbridled discretion to school officials to suppress free speech," Bowman said. "Each of these has a long pedigree of Supreme Court cases that prohibit what the school officials did."

However, school officials said the boy and his mother agreed to forgo the crown when the school's principal raised questions.

"The solution was what the folks at Willow Hill thought was OK with the mom," said Abington district solicitor Ken Roos.

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