Supreme Court affirms religious club's use of school
6/12/2001
WASHINGTON (UMNS) - The U.S. Supreme Court has upheld the right of religious organizations to share the same privileges available to secular groups in using public facilities.
The 6-3 verdict in the case of Good News Club v. Milford Central School was announced June 11.
Last fall, the United Methodist Board of Church and Society joined with several other denominations and groups in filing a friend-of-the-court brief siding with the Good News Club, which had sought to hold after-school meetings in the Milford (N.Y.) School building in 1996.
"This is a basic church-state question," said Jaydee Hanson, a board staff executive. "Just as our denomination's policies say that the state ought not favor any particular religion, neither should it discriminate against religion."
Milford School is the only school in the community, serving kindergarten through 12th-grade children. Opponents of the Good News Club's use of the building had argued that the conservative evangelical group should be prohibited under constitutional guarantees of separation of church and state. They said that because the club strives for a profession of faith in Jesus Christ as a personal savior from children as young as 6, boys and girls might confuse this religious instruction with their school classes.
Earlier Supreme Court decisions had cleared the way for religious clubs made up of high school or college students to use public facilities on the same basis that secular organizations were permitted to use them. This decision extends that concept to elementary school children and facilities.
Hanson noted that in this case, nonreligious groups were permitted to use the school for their meetings but religious groups were not. "It was really discrimination against religious groups by virtue of their being religious groups," he said.
"We think the court made the right decision," he said. "That doesn't mean we will always like what a particular religious group does in a club in school, but that religious groups ought not be treated differently than other secular groups that would use the school."
Other religious groups that signed the same legal brief included the National Council of Churches, the American Muslim Council, the General Conference of the Seventh-day Adventists, the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, First Church of Christ Scientist, the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church, the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. and the Baptist Joint Committee's office of public legislation.
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