Kansas locals are left with no choice but to see the portrait of Jesus removed from the public school in the town of Chanute where it was hung since the 1950s.
The small town of about 9,200 residents with 1,800 children in schools, had never objected to the portrait, given its majority Christian population served by 30 churches.
However, atheist advocacy group Freedom from Religion Foundation (FFRF) recently sent a letter to the Chanute public schools, asking them to investigate the presence of the portrait in Royster Middle School and remove it, after a "local community member" approached them with a complaint.
FFRF called the "Head of Christ" portrait by Warner Sallman in a government school, "an egregious violation of the First Amendment," and cited several Supreme Court rulings that barred the schools from religious proclamation.
The advocacy group was approached by an unnamed resident who asked the organization to help in removing the portrait.
"They were afraid to bring it up themselves so they came to us. In areas that are predominantly Christian, the backlash that non-Christians receive when they speak out against government endorsement of religion can be very severe," Ryan Jayne, law clerk at FFRF, told Reuters.
Chanute Public Schools Superintendent Richard Proffitt removed the portrait without much resistance, even though the residents are grieved over its displacement.
"I conferred with legal counsel and both of them told me to be in compliance with state and federal law that we had to have it removed," he said.
FFRF had filed a lawsuit against a middle school in Jackson, Ohio, over a similar painting, for which the school had to pay $95,000 to the advocacy groups.
