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.
More information about this initiative, and back issues
of this newsletter, may be found on the
religious discrimination home page of the Civil Rights
Division website. |
IN
THIS ISSUE:
Court
Upholds Right of Good News Clubs to Distribute Flyers and Permission
Slips
In
a victory for the equal treatment of religious
expression in public schools, the United
States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit
agreed with the Civil Rights Division on June 30 that
the Good News Club in Montgomery County, Maryland, may
distribute notices about its meetings and permission
slips to students on the same basis as other community
groups serving children. The Civil Rights Division had
filed a friend-of-the-court
brief
and argued the case before the Court of Appeals.
Assistant
Attorney General R. Alexander Acosta applauded the decision.
“The Supreme Court made clear in the Good
News Club case that it
is unconstitutional to discriminate against religion-oriented youth
groups that want to use school facilities after hours,” he said.
“The Court of Appeals has now also made clear that schools may not
try to do an end-run around the Supreme Court’s decision by
allowing religious groups to meet, but then denying them the
opportunity to inform students and parents about meetings on equal
terms with other groups.”
Good News
Clubs are Christian youth organizations that hold weekly after-school
meetings for children throughout the country featuring Bible-based
games, stories, and other activities. Montgomery County allows most
community groups serving children to provide flyers and permission
slips to the school for inclusion in students' "take-home" folders
and cubbies. 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, Red Cross, and many others. Like many of these groups,
the Good News Club holds meetings for children at school facilities
after school hours. However, Montgomery refused to permit the
Good News Club to give out its notices and permission slips like
the other groups did, saying that the distribution system was not
open to “proselytizing” or “evangelical” groups.
The Good News
Club filed suit claiming that the school was unconstitutionally
discriminating against it. The trial court denied the Club’s motion
for a preliminary injunction to allow it to distribute its materials.
The Good News Club appealed. The Civil Rights Division filed a brief
supporting the Good News Club’s position and argued the case before
the Court of Appeals in Richmond, Virginia. The Court of Appeals agreed
with the Civil Rights Division and held that the court should have
required Montgomery County to let the Good News Club give out its flyers.
The court noted that Montgomery County had conceded that it was
engaging in viewpoint discrimination against the Good News Club.
The county, however, argued that this discrimination was required
by the Establishment Clause of the Constitution. Rejecting this
rationale, the court held that it is “plain, under controlling
precedent, that allowing [the Good News Club] access to this forum
would not be likely to violate the Establishment Clause.” The court
relied on the June 2001 decision of the U.S. Supreme Court in Good
News Club v. Milford, which held that a town could not bar a Good
News Club from holding after-school meetings at a public school,
since the school's community-use policy permitted secular youth
groups engaged in the same types of activities to use the space.
The Court of Appeals likewise held that schools giving out flyers
for students to take home did not amount to government support or
advancement of religion. The court held that “receipt of an
invitation to a religious activity (with the hope that students will
deliver the invitation to their parents) simply does not rise to the
level of support or participat[ion] in religion or its exercise.”
Guilty Pleas in Church Desecration Case
On July
16 the Department of Justice announced the guilty pleas of two men
responsible for vandalizing the Mount Moriah Baptist Church in
Roanoke, Virginia. The church is a nationally recognized historic
landmark. Zachary Lee Bryant and Christopher Martin, both of
Roanoke, each pleaded guilty to conspiring to violate the civil
rights of the church’s African-American congregation.
R.
Alexander Acosta, Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights,
stated: “The deliberate desecration of a house of worship should
offend all Americans. We are committed to the protection of houses
of worship from attacks based on racial and religious bigotry, and
will vigorously pursue those responsible for such hateful acts.”
The two men
admitted to breaking into the church on January 12, 2004 and committing
various acts of vandalism, including breaking windows in the sanctuary,
shattering light fixtures, throwing hymnals through windows, discharging
fire extinguishers, and smashing photographs of congregants that hung on
the sanctuary wall.
The case
was investigated by the FBI, and prosecuted by the Civil Rights
Division in conjunction with the office of the United States Attorney
for the Western District of Virginia.
Supreme
Court Reverses Lower Court Invalidation of Pledge, Sidesteps
Constitutionality Question
On June 14,
the U.S. Supreme Court handed down its much-awaited decision in Elk Grove
Unified School District v. Newdow, reversing the Ninth Circuit
Court of Appeal’s ruling that the Pledge of Allegiance was unconstitutional.
The Court, however, did not squarely address the issue of whether the pledge
was constitutional or not. Instead, the Court held that the man who had
brought the case, the noncustodial father of a California elementary school
student, did not have legal standing to bring the suit. The Court’s ruling
threw out the lower court’s decision, making the Pledge legal again in the
Ninth Circuit, which covers nine western states. The failure to reach the
merits of the case, however, leaves open the possibility of challenges in
future cases.
Chief
Justice Rehnquist and Justices O’Connor and Thomas agreed that the
court of appeals should be reversed, but believed the Supreme Court
should have reached the substance of the case and upheld the pledge.
Chief Justice Rehnquist argued in his concurring opinion that:
The phrase
“under God” is in no sense a prayer, nor an endorsement of any religion,
but a simple recognition of the fact noted [by Congress]: “From the
time of our earliest history our peoples and our institutions have
reflected the traditional concept that our Nation was founded on a
fundamental belief in God.” Reciting the pledge, or listening to others
recite it, is a patriotic exercise, not a religious one; participants
promise fidelity to our flag and our Nation, not to any particular God,
faith, or church.
The United States
had argued in its brief that the reference to God in the Pledge
“permissibly acknowledges the role that faith in God has played in the
formation, political foundation, and continuing development of this Country.”
The pledge, the United States’ brief argued, recognizes “the undeniable
historical facts that the Nation was founded by individuals who believed
in God, that the Constitution’s protection of individual right and autonomy
reflects those religious convictions, and that the Nation continues as a
matter of demographic and cultural fact to be ‘a religious people whose
institutions presuppose a Supreme Being.’”
Brief Filed in Support of Congregation in Land-Use Dispute
The Civil
Rights Division filed a brief on May 19th in an important
religious land-use case in California. In Guru Nanak Sikh Society of
Yuba City v. County of Sutter, the Division argued to the United States
Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit that the county’s successive denials
of permits for a Sikh congregation to build a temple violated its rights
under the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act of 2000
(RLUIPA). The Division’s brief also
argued that RLUIPA was a valid exercise of Congress’s power. The Division
intervened in the lawsuit after the Defendants challenged RLUIPA’s
constitutionality. RLUIPA bars zoning discrimination against houses of
worship in or zoning laws that cause an unjustifiable burden on religion.
The
plaintiff, Guru Nanak Sikh Society of Yuba City, purchased a two-acre
tract of land in a residential area in Sutter County, California.
Sutter County does not permit houses of worship anywhere in the
county as-of-right. Houses of worship may locate in the county only
if they obtain a conditional use permit and, even then, only in six
out of the county’s twenty-two zoning districts. Four of those six
districts are residential, and the other two are agricultural.
The County’s planning department reviewed the plan and recommended
approval. However, after a public meeting at which neighbors
complained about potential noise and traffic, the County Planning
Commission denied the permit.
Having
been rebuffed in the residential district, the Sikh Society purchased
a thirty-acre plot in one of the two agricultural zones in which
houses of worship are permitted by conditional use permit. This
permit was also denied.
The Sikh Society
filed suit under RLUIPA, and the District Court found that the County’s
actions imposed a substantial burden on the Sikh Society’s religious
exercise without a compelling justification. The county appealed to the
Ninth Circuit. The United States’ brief argues that in light of the
Society’s demonstrated good-faith efforts to site its temple in a location
and in a manner that will satisfy the county’s requirements, it should not
have to “continue to purchase property after property in the [six]
residential and agricultural zones in the speculative hope that at some
point it will obtain approval.” Under these circumstances, the brief
maintains, the denial of a conditional permit violated RLUIPA. The brief
also argues that RLUIPA was well within Congress’s power to enact under
Section 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment.
Morton Grove, IL, Settles Lawsuit
with School After DOJ Mediation
Ending a dispute between a religious school and a village
that began in 2002, and which led to a federal lawsuit and
a Civil Rights Division investigation, the Village of Morton
Grove and the Muslim Community Center announced on June 2
that they had reached a settlement with the help of mediators
from the Department of Justice Community Relations Service.
The Muslim Community
Center operates a K-8 school in the Village of Morton Grove, Illinois.
The school holds daily prayer services for its students in its gym, and
had opened services on Fridays to Muslims who live and work in the area.
In November 2002, the school applied for a permit to expand its facilities
to provide more classrooms, and to build a mosque on the site. The proposal
met with heated community opposition. Some of the opposition was based on
traffic and congestion concerns. However, there also were incidents of
vandalism at the school and expressions of anti-Muslim sentiment.
The
Village denied the school’s permit application in April 2003. In
October 2003, the school brought an action in federal court under
the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized
Persons Act (RLUIPA). The Civil Rights Division opened an
investigation into whether the school’s rights were violated,
invoking its RLUIPA enforcement authority. The Department of
Justice Community Relations Service also began mediation efforts
between the school and the village, and also with a group of
neighbors, the Morton Grove Organization, which had filed a
separate lawsuit against the school and the Village to try to
block the school’s expansion plans.
After a
series of mediation sessions with the Community Relations Service,
the school and the Village announced in court on June 2 that they
had reached an agreement on a plan that would meet the school’s
expansion needs while limiting the impact on traffic, parking, and
congestion. The Morton Grove Organization, however, dropped out of
mediation and has said that it will continue to pursue its private
suit.
United
States Department of Justice
Civil Rights Division
http://www.usdoj.gov/crt
