By now, you've probably heard the story: exemplary student Andrea Hernandez has decided to fight her San Antonio high school's plan to outfit every student with an RFID-equipped badge in order to better take attendance and track students while on school property. (Radio frequency identification tags are short-range tracking tags that can be scanned by local readers, though they don't enable any sort of GPS-style location tracking of a student's movements around town, at home, etc.) Hernandez objects to the plan, which the district instituted in order to better recover its daily per-pupil funding from the state of Texas, on the grounds that it was a terrific invasion of her privacy—and of her religious liberty.
How can a plastic badge with a tiny built-in microchip violate religious liberty? The Rutherford Institute, which has taken the Hernandez case and filed a lawsuit (PDF) over it in Bexar County, Texas, puts it this way:
Read Full Article »