Reversing 20 years of precedent, a federal appeals court ruled a public school must allow churches to worship in facilities it allows other groups to use.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit said yesterday in a 2-1 decision the Bronx Household of Faith can rent space at a New York City public school despite a Board of Education policy barring “worship services” on school property.
The school board was appealing a decision last year by a U.S. District judge who ruled the board violated the church’s First Amendment rights “by singling out worship services for exclusion from its buildings, which are open to everyone else.”
The New York schools won an appeals-court decision in 1998, arguing the practice violates the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause, which says “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.”
But the Bronx church brought up the case again in 2001 after the U.S. Supreme Court decision, Good News Bible Club vs. Milford, which said a Christian youth group that prays and reads the Bible could meet after hours in a public school facility. Local officials had insisted the club’s expression was too religious and its activities were too much like “worship.”
Yesterday, the appeals court struck down the New York schools’ “discriminatory religious gerrymandering,” said Jordan Lorence, an attorney with the Scottsdale, Ariz.-based Alliance Defense Fund.
The majority opinion said, “Central to our conclusion is a candid acknowledgment for the factual parallels between the activities described in Good New Club and the activities at issue in the present litigation.”
The judges pointed out the schools allow other community groups to “undertake the teaching of morals and character development on school premises” and, therefore, the church could not be barred “without engaging in unconstitutional viewpoint discrimination.”
A dissenting opinion said the school board can properly distinguish between religious services and other activities.
Lawyers for the school board said they might appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.
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WND Staff