Religious
Freedom in Focus is a
monthly email update about the Civil
Rights Division's religious liberty
and religious discrimination cases.
Assistant Attorney General R. Alexander
Acosta has placed a priority on these
cases. Through vigorous enforcement
of:
- Federal
statutes prohibiting religion-based discrimination
in education, employment, housing, public
facilities, and public accommodations;
- Federal
laws against arson and vandalism of houses
of worship and bias crimes against people
because of their faith; and
- The
Religious Land Use and Institutionalized
Persons Act (RLUIPA);
and
through participation as intervenor and
friend-of-the-court in cases involving
the denial of equal treatment based on
religion, the Civil Rights Division is
working to protect the right of people
of all faiths to participate fully in public
life. |
IN
THIS ISSUE:
Civil
Rights Division Intervenes in Suit to Protect Muslim
Student's Right to Wear Headscarf to Public
School
The Civil Rights Division has intervened in a
pending lawsuit against the Muskogee, Oklahoma
Public School District, seeking to protect
the right of a sixth-grade Muslim girl to
wear a headscarf to school. The Division's
motion to intervene, filed on March 30 in
the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District
of Oklahoma, was granted on April 12.
The
United States' suit alleges that the student
was twice suspended from the Benjamin Franklin
Science Academy for refusing to take off her
headscarf, or hijab, after being told that it
violated the school's dress code. That code prohibits
students from wearing hats, caps, bandanas, or
jacket hoods inside school buildings. The student
and her parents had filed suit in October
2003. The case is entitled Hearn et al.
v. Muskogee Public School District 020.
The
United States' complaint alleges
that the school district violated the Equal Protection
Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution
by applying its dress code in an inconsistent
and discriminatory manner. The complaint
asks the court to prohibit the school district
from discriminating against the student,
and to have the dress code policy revised to
ensure that discrimination on the basis of
religion does not continue.
"No
student should be forced to choose between following
her faith and enjoying the benefits of a public
education," said Assistant Attorney
General R. Alexander Acosta. "We certainly respect
local school systems' authority to set
dress standards, and otherwise regulate their
students, but such rules cannot come at the
cost of constitutional liberties. Religious
discrimination has no place in American schools."
The
case has attracted national and international
attention. Articles about the case have appeared
in CNN,
MSNBC,
The
International Herald Tribune,
and the BBC,
among others.
The Defendants moved for summary judgment on March 30. The case
likely will be heard within the next
three months.
Constitutionality
of Church-Arson Prevention Act Upheld
On April 5, the United States Court of Appeals
for the Eighth Circuit held in Corum
v. United States
that the federal "Church Arson Prevention
Act" did not violate the First Amendment's
Establishment Clause, and upheld the conviction
of Gary Corum for making a series of bomb
threats to synagogues in the Minneapolis
area.
Corum
was convicted of three counts of violating the
statute known as the Church Arson Prevention
Act, 18
U.S.C. 247, which prohibits damaging or
destroying religious property, or interfering
with religious exercise through force or the
threat of force, in a manner that affects interstate
commerce. He was also convicted of three counts
of 18 U.S.C. 844(e), which prohibits using a
telephone to make a threat of violence. The Civil
Rights Division initiated the prosecution after
Corum left bomb and arson threats on the
voice mail of three synagogues in the Twin
Cities area in July 2001. In those messages,
he claimed to represent the White Aryan
People's Party and ended his messages with "Heil
Hitler."
On
appeal, Corum argued that the Church Arson Prevention
Act violates the Constitution's Establishment
Clause. He claimed that by singling out
religious institutions for special protection,
the federal government was unconstitutionally
establishing religion. The Court rejected
this argument, accepting the Civil Rights
Division's argument in its appeals
brief, and holding
that the purpose and effect of the Act
is not to advance religion but rather
"to curb violence and threats of violence
that adversely affect an aspect of interstate
commerce Congress has found to be particularly
vulnerable to violent interference."
The Court also held that Corum's threats met
the interstate commerce requirement of
the Act, inasmuch as synagogues are engaged
in a wide range of religious, social service,
and educational activities affecting commerce.
"The
Court has sent a strong and clear message that
Congress may protect the constitutional rights
of Americans to freely exercise their chosen
faiths in peace without violating the
Establishment Clause of the First Amendment,"
said R. Alexander Acosta, Assistant Attorney
General for the Civil Rights Division.
Corum,
who has been free on bond pending appeal, will
serve a term of 16 months' imprisonment.
The case was prosecuted by the Civil Rights
Division and the U.S. Attorney's Office for
the District of Minnesota.
Civil
Rights Division Anticipates Decisions in Two Good News Club Cases
The Civil Rights Division participated as amicus
in two important cases involving the equal
treatment of religious speech in schools currently
pending in the U.S. Courts of Appeals for the
Third and Fourth Circuits, Child Evangelism
Fellowship v. Stafford Township School District
(New Jersey) and Child Evangelism Fellowship
v. Montgomery County Public Schools (Maryland).
In
June 2001, the U.S. Supreme Court held in Good
News Club v. Milford,
that a town could not bar a Christian youth
organization from holding after-school meetings
at a public school featuring Christian stories,
games, and activities, since the school's
community-use policy permitted secular groups
to make similar use of the space. The Supreme
Court held that this unconstitutionally discriminated
against religious viewpoints, and rejected the school's
claim that the discrimination was required
to avoid violating the First Amendment's
prohibition on government establishment of religion.
One
of the key factors the Supreme Court relied on for its
holding that allowing equal access would not
violate the Establishment Clause was that children
could only attend Good News Clubs with
their parents' permission. As a result, the Court
reasoned, there could be no government
pressure on young children to attend the meetings.
Despite
this holding, some schools have decided that while they
must let religion-oriented children's organizations like
Good News Clubs meet, they will not let them pass out
permission slips and other literature about the programs.
Montgomery County, Maryland, for example, permits groups
serving to children to provide flyers and permission slips
to the school for inclusion in students' "take-home"
folders. Groups that have been permitted
to distribute literature in this manner have
included the Boys and Girls Clubs of Greater
Washington, sports leagues, the Boy Scouts and Girl
Scouts, the YMCA, and many others. Yet the
Good News Club was denied permission to distribute its
permission slips and flyers in this manner.
The Good News Club responded by filing suit
through its parent organization, Child Evangelism
Fellowship. A federal trial court denied its
motion for a preliminary injunction, and the
group appealed.
The
Civil Rights Division submitted a brief in
support of the Good News Club, and participated in oral
arguments in Richmond on September 24, 2003.
The brief argued that contrary to the school's
contention that it had to discriminate against
the Good News Club's permission slips and flyers
to avoid establishing State religion, "permitting
access on an equal basis would preserve
the neutrality toward religion required by the
Constitution." A decision is pending.
The
United States also submitted a brief in
and argued a virtually identical case on September 11,
2003, before the Third Circuit in Philadelphia. That case
involved the Good News Club being barred from
distributing permission slips and related literature
in Stafford Township, New Jersey. As in the
Montgomery County case, various other youth organizations
had been permitted to distribute
their materials, but the Good News Club was excluded
solely because of the religious nature of
its activities. The trial court ruled in favor
of the Good News Club, and the school board appealed.
Friend-of-the-court briefs in support of the
Good News Club were filed by the National Association
of Evangelicals, the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.),
the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of
America, and the American Center for Law and
Justice. A brief in support of Stafford Township,
on the other hand, was filed by People
for the American Way, Americans United for
Separation of Church and State, the Anti-Defamation
League and the New Jersey Education Association.
Decision in this case is pending as well. Watch
future issues of Religious Freedom in Focus
for updates.
United
States Department of Justice
Civil Rights Division
http://www.usdoj.gov/crt