Court Hears Church State Dispute

http://www.newsday.com/ap/topnews/ap528.htm

*note last paragraph.

Court Hears Church-State Dispute
by SHANNON McCAFFREY
Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) — Supreme Court Justices grappled with a church-state
dispute Wednesday, whether a Christian youth group should be allowed to hold
after-school meetings at a public school.

Frank Miller, lawyer for the Milford School District in upstate New York,
told the high court that meetings of the Good News Club amount to religious
worship and as such are banned by the district, just as it bans partisan
political and commercial activity.

The lawyer for the youth group, which has chapters all over the country,
argued that denying the group access violates their free-speech rights.
Attorney Thomas Marcelle asked why other groups that teach moral
instruction, like the 4-H Club and the Boy Scouts, may use the school in
tiny Milford, N.Y., and the Christian group cannot.

”This is a free-speech case,” Thomas Marcelle said. ”We’re not asking for
special access, just equal access.”

Justices seemed particularly interested in what constitutes religious
worship. The Good News Club aims to educate children on Christian moral
values through Bible study, prayer, songs and games, which the school
district maintains violates the Constitutional separation of church and
state.

”We have the school in effect utilized as a church,” Miller argued.

But Justice Antonin Scalia disagreed.

”Teaching the Scripture, teaching what the Scripture has to say about
morality, I think it’s a great distortion to call that religious worship
even if you do throw in a prayer or two,” Scalia said.

Other justices seemed concerned with the young age of the grade-school
children involved. Some justices suggested the pupils might believe the
club’s viewpoints were endorsed by the school because they were too young to
understand otherwise. Marcelle pointed to an earlier court ruling that
insured equal access for a religious groups in a university setting.

”Isn’t the nub of the matter in this case that you’re not dealing with
college students, you’re dealing with grade school students?” Justice David
Souter asked Marcelle.

The 20 pupils attending the meetings are ages 5-12. Since all were sent by
parents, questioning turned to whether other students were milling around.

”They are infected seeing the other kids go into the activity?” Scalia
jokingly asked.

”This is a limited open forum,” Miller said of the school. ”We have
attempted to exclude the subject matter of religion.”

”That sounds like you’re discriminating in free speech terms against
religion,” Justice Stephen Breyer responded.

The case is the first key church-state case the high court has heard since
June, when justices ruled against prayer at school football games.

It comes as President Bush advances a plan to increase the involvement of
religious institutions in solving social problems. Critics who say using
public money for such programs could violate the wall between church and
state.

The Rev. Stephen Fournier and his wife, Darleen, who run the Good News Club
in Milford, sued after the district denied them access in 1996.

The Fourniers currently run the club in their church, the Milford Center
Community Bible Church, a few miles down the road from the district’s lone
K-12 school. They claim the school would be more convenient for pupils who
participate in the club.

A federal judge sided with the school district, as did the 2nd U.S. Circuit
Court of Appeals last year. However, the 8th U.S. Circuit ruled in 1994 in
favor of another Good News Club on free-speech grounds in a case from
Missouri.

The Fourniers sued with the help of the Rutherford Institute, a conservative
legal group.

More than a dozen friend-of-the-court briefs have been filed in support of
the Fourniers from organizations representing groups including the National
Council of Churches and the American Muslim Council. Eleven states –
Alabama, Iowa, Louisiana, Mississippi, Nebraska, Ohio, South Carolina,
Tennessee, Texas, Utah and Virginia — have also backed the Fourniers.

The American Civil Liberties Union, the Anti-Defamation League and state and
national school boards associations are backing the school system.