New York public schools may bar after hours religion

If the ruling becomes binding, and public schools legally bar religious groups from using their facilities, it would definitely be a good thing.

It’s about time that the separation of Church and State is respected and enforced in this country. If religious groups want to meet for services, prayer groups, choir practice – whatever, they can use their own facilities. Otherwise, they can begin paying taxes just as every other enterprise does. TGO

Refer to story below: Source: Reuters

NEW YORK (Reuters) – An appeals court on Thursday ruled that New York public schools could legally bar religious groups from using its facilities after hours for worship services.

The split ruling by a three-judge panel of the Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit in New York vacated a lower court’s injunction which had prevented New York City’s Board of Education from enforcing its rule against religious worship in its schools.

“The conduct of a ‘religious worship service’ has the effect of placing centrally, and perhaps even of establishing, the religion in the school,” circuit judges Guido Calabresi and Pierre Leval said, with Judge John Walker dissenting.

The school board’s “prohibition of ‘religious worship services’ does not constitute viewpoint discrimination, it is a content-based exclusion, which passes constitutional muster so long as the exclusion is reasonable in light of the purposes of the forum,” the two judges said.

The decision on Thursday marked the fourth time the dispute, which dates back to 1994, has risen to the 2nd Circuit level.

It started when a religious group in New York’s Bronx borough sought to use a local school’s premises for Sunday religious services, including preaching and the singing of Christian hymns.

The school board over the years repeatedly denied the Bronx Household of Faith’s request on grounds it could not appear to be officially endorsing or favoring a religious viewpoint.

Judge Walker, in his dissent on Thursday, cited a 2001 Supreme Court decision which allowed another Christian group to use the after-hours facilities of a school elsewhere in New York State for Bible study and other activities.

Walker said after-hours use of public school premises did not undermine the government’s neutrality in religious matters. Rather, he argued, preventing such use would have a chilling effect on free speech.

(Reporting by Basil Katz; Editing by Jerry Norton)

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2 Responses to New York public schools may bar after hours religion

  1. Pingback: NYLJ: Schools Must Allow Religious ‘Expression’ But Can Ban ‘Worship’ « lennyesq

  2. william wallace says:

    To bar school after hours for use in the preaching of religion. // Is understandable /and putting forth such a viewpoint / showing the heart of a good soul /or souls.

    HOWEVER /// HOWEVER /// HOIWEVER /// HOWEVER.

    Such is not the way/ it only arouses RELIGIOUS RAGE
    making matters FaR wORsE for the victims of religious brainwasing / as locking religious halfbaked crackpots
    further into isolation // intheir mad illusions of a heaven
    far beyond the clouds where awaiting God & son Jesus.

    In the religious main it christianity // or groups in having
    broken from christianity / in forming their own particular
    half-baked ideas beliefs // which can go to the extreme.

    Western nations having had so many many centuries of
    religious christian brainwashing / it little wonder their be
    so many millions whom still in need to be freed // abled in coming to their senses /return to live in the real world.

    For many children religious brainwashingbut starting as young as 3yrs 4yrs 5yrs by 12yrs damage as done
    to the developing brain is severe / many of the weaker spirited children unabe form a independent viewpoint
    dependent on others telling them what to think what to believe. Thus human beings in having great capability
    reduced to a moron // spinning out religious nonsense.

    One can only be understanding to try in a gradual ongoing process / tkeep emotions in balance / try
    to guide christians back to the world of reality // that
    there nought to fear in facing reality. Christians hide
    within halfbaked ideas /beliefs worshiping an make believe paradise a world they claim / which a place
    far beyond the clouds an place of eternal happiness.

    Its a sad dire situation. / /Thus one must be mercyful
    in showing christians compassion / bringing a depth
    of understanding to lighten their plight /their suffering.

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