Attorney Sees Doors Opening For Christian Clubs On Campus
by Jim Brown
June 7, 2004
(AgapePress) - A school district in Washington State has agreed to no longer bar Child Evangelism Fellowship from using school facilities.The Mount Vernon School District had been charging CEF's "Good News Clubs" a rental fee, even though other secular clubs were given free use of the facilities. Once CEF overcame that hurdle, the district decided to prohibit the Good News Clubs from passing out fliers advertising its events to students.
The school system finally did a dramatic about-face, ending its discrimination against CEF, but only after the Florida-based Liberty Counsel legal organization issued lawsuit threats on three separate occasions.
Liberty Counsel president and general counsel Mat Staver points out that equal access means equal treatment in every respect, but he notes that the kind of discrimination happening in the Mount Vernon School District is all too common.
"There's a lot of Good News Clubs and other Christian after-school clubs that either are being denied access to the facilities or, if they have access, are being charged fees where the secular clubs are not. Or they're not being allowed to advertise their particular meetings in the same way secular clubs are allowed to do so," he says.
However, Staver notes, the United States Constitution clearly forbids denying Christian groups these equal privileges on the basis of their religious point of view. "If there's any discrimination at all it violates the First Amendment concept of equal access," he says.
Still, the attorney notes, the school had its ultimate "change of heart" not because it wanted to do the right thing voluntarily, but because Liberty Counsel intervened. He says Christian groups need to take advantage of the legal protections the law presently affords, thanks to a number of court cases that have "opened the doors wide."
"I think it's a very opportune time for Christians to be able to take Christian clubs to schools immediately after the last bell," Staver says, "and be able to bring essentially a high powered Sunday School program to the public schools. It's an opportunity that we've not had in our lifetime until recently."
Last year Liberty Counsel was successful in gaining equal access for Good News Clubs in more than 400 elementary schools in the Los Angeles, California, area.
