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On June 11, the Court ruled in Good News Club v. Milford Central School that religious clubs cannot be prevented from meeting at public schools after hours if other private groups are allowed to meet during that time. In a 6-3 opinion written by Justice Clarence Thomas, the Court said excluding a club because of its religious viewpoint violates the First Amendment.

"Overall this is a huge boon for religious freedom," says Jordan Lorence, senior counsel for the Alliance Defense Fund. "The court essentially said you can't use the fact that someone is religious as an excuse to treat them worse than somebody else."

Thomas Marcelle, the attorney for the Good News Club, found particular significance in the Court's rejection of the argument that speech with an explicit evangelical message should not be protected alongside other speech.

The club uses a curriculum from Child Evangelism Fellowship, a national group based in Warrenton, Missouri. CEF focuses on leading children to Christ. It has approximately 1,200 missionaries overseas, 700 full-time employees in the United States and Canada, and an additional 40,000 volunteers around the world.

Religious conservatives and Christian legal scholars hail the decision as a landmark free-speech case that will protect religious activities from discrimination in the public square. "This is a major victory that will end 18 years of litigation on the equal access issue," says Jay Sekulow, chief counsel of the American Center for Law and Justice. Sekulow adds that the ruling is expected to be widely implemented since the majority opinion's broad language "doesn't leave any wiggle room."

Opponents argue that the decision fails to distinguish between a clearly established religious forum designed for adults and an adult-led evangelistic effort targeting young children. They also complain that the Court's broad interpretation of what constitutes free speech means school districts can no longer exercise discretion about the kinds of groups that use their facilities.

"If the KKK [Ku Klux Klan] wants to call itself The Good Fun Club and teach about patriotism and God, it can do it," says Barry Lynn, executive director of Americans United for the Separation of Church and State. Rather than allow schools to become "battle zones for religious and political recruiters of every kind," Lynn says, some school districts may simply decide to close their doors to everyone.

"The choice they'll have to make is, either allow everybody to come in after school, including competing religious groups, or close the forum completely," says Edwin Darden, senior staff attorney for the National School Board Association. "If they choose the latter, there are going to be some excellent programs that have served the community that would be harmed." Some already have been harmed. Responding to a state appellate court ruling that an equal-access suit brought by a member of the Fellowship of Christian Athletes chapter may go forward, trustees of the Saddleback Valley Unified School District on June 12 revoked the club status of 29 groups, with nearly 1,200 members, on four campuses in and around Mission Viejo.

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August 6 2001, Vol. 45, No. 10