Keep proselytizing out of public schools, AU tells Supreme Court

Church & State, Feb 2001

Public schools should have the right to refuse space to religious groups seeking to proselytize young children, Americans United for Separation of Church and State has advised the Supreme Court.

Americans United presented its argument in a friend-of-the-court brief filed before the high court last month in the case The Good News Club v. Milford Central School. The legal controversy centers around a New York public school that has refused to rent its building to a religious group that wants to hold evangelistic classes for young children right after the school day ends. (See "Evangelism, Public Schools and the Supreme Court," January 2001 Church & State.)

Stephen Fournier, a local pastor in Milford, N.Y., wants to use the school for weekly meetings of his Good News Club that start just six minutes after classes end. Good News Clubs, which are sponsored by the national Child Evangelism Fellowship, are aimed at converting children as young as 5 and 6 to fundamentalist Christianity.

School officials note that while other outside groups are permitted to use the school, none have requested to do so at the very end of the school day on an ongoing basis.

In the brief, AU argues that young children are unable to distinguish between events that are school sponsored and those that are not. The brief also contends that it will be necessary for school officials to escort students to meetings of the Good News Cub, creating too much of a connection between the school and a private religious group.

"No child between the ages of six to twelve, under the circumstances of this case, can reasonably be expected to appreciate that, despite all of the similarities between Good News Club classes and his or her other classes the latter, but not the former, are school sponsored," asserts the brief.

Americans United filed the brief jointly with the American Civil Liberties Union, the New York Civil Liberties Union Foundation, the American Jewish Committee and People For the American Way.