School District Drops Discriminatory Stance Against Religion Classes
by Jim Brown
September 17, 2004
(AgapePress) - A lawsuit threat has prompted a New York school district to rethink it's decision to exclude a teacher from leading community education classes on religious topics.The Alliance Defense Fund (ADF) sent a demand letter to the Patchogue-Medford Union Free School District, accusing it of violating the First and Fourteenth Amendment rights of longtime teacher Bruce Bennett by shutting him out of a program that provided education classes of all kinds for the community. Bennett has been teaching in public schools for 15 years and has degrees in biblical studies and social science.
The ADF, a group specializing in legal defense and religious freedom advocacy, took up Bennett's cause not long after one of its officials allegedly told the teacher, "I don't care if I'm violating the law, you're not coming into the program." But ADF senior counsel Gary McCaleb says he is glad the school district reversed its course after receiving the demand letter from the Christian legal group, despite the district official's original determination to exclude the religious classes from the program.
"I think if he'd stuck with his guns and continued along that line, certainly we would have wound up in federal court," McCaleb says. "But the important thing is that this particular official and the school district made the right choice and backed off from a very wrong position and has allowed equal access."
The attorney says the school district has agreed it will no longer bar Bennett from teaching religious subjects in the community education program and now realizes that it cannot lawfully discriminate against him based on the religious content of his classes.
"When you're providing equal access to people," McCaleb says, "there is no issue of Establishment Clause violation or endorsement. You're simply letting people of all sorts -- religious and nonreligious -- use government facilities, and that's what equal access is all about."
The Alliance Defense Fund is a legal alliance founded for the purpose of aggressively defending religious liberty and empowering its allies in the fight for religious freedom through strategy, training, funding, and litigation.
