Document ID: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-ca10-95-02009/USCOURTS-ca10-95-02009-0/pdf.json

Parties Involved:
Church on the Rock
Appellant
City of Albuquerque
Appellee
Don Kimbro
Appellant
Toni Martorelli
Appellee
Mark Sanchez
Appellee
Kathleen Stark
Appellee

Document Text:

PUBLISH FILED 

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS 

IJalted Statea Court of Appea 

Teiltb Circuit 

TENTH CIRCUIT 

CHURCH ON THE ROCK; DON KIMBRO, 

Pastor, 

Plaintiffs- Appellants, 

v. 

CflY OF ALBUQUERQUE; TONI 

MARTORELLI, in her official capacity as 

Director ofFamily and Community SeiVices 

for the City of Albuquerque; MARK 

SANCHEZ, in his official capacity as Deputy 

Director ofFamily and Community SeiVices 

for the City of Albuquerque; KATIH£EN 

STARK, in her official capacity as Supervisor, 

Bear Canyon Senior Center, City of 

Albuquerque, 

Defendants - Appellees. 

MAY 23 '1996 

PATRICK FISHER 

Oerk 

No. 95-2009 

APPEAL FROM THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT 

FOR THE DISTRICT OF NEW MEXICO 

(D. C. No. 94-CV-1101) 

Benjamin W. Bull, The American Center for Law and Justice, Phoenix, Arizona (Jay Alan 

Sekulow, The American Center for Law and Justice, Washington, DC, Nikolas T. Nikas, The 

American Center for Law and Justice, Phoenix, Arizona, and Paul F. Becht, Becht Law Firm, 

Albuquerque, NM, with him on the briefs) for the Appellants. 

William D. Winter, Assistant City Attorney (Robert M. White, City Attorney, with him on the 

brief) Albuquerque, NM, for the Appellees. 

Appellate Case: 95-2009 Document: 01019279157 Date Filed: 05/23/1996 Page: 1 
Before TACHA, LOGAN, and REAVLEY,• Circuit Judges. 

TACHA, Circuit Judge. 

Plaintiffs Church on the Rock and Pastor Don Kimbro (''Church on the Rock") brought 

suit under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 alleging that defendants the City of Albuquerque and its agents (''the 

City'') denied Church on the Rock's First Amendment right to free expression at City Senior 

Centers. The district court granted summary judgment in favor of the City on all claims. Church 

on the Rock now appeals, arguing that the City's policy prohibiting "sectarian instruction and 

religious worship" at City Senior Centers violates the First Amendment. We exercise jurisdiction 

pursuant to 28 U.S. C. § 1291 and reverse. 

L Background 

The City owns and operates six Senior Centers. The centers are multipwpose facilities 

that provide forums for lectures, classes, movies, crafts, bingo, dancing, physical exercise, and 

other activities. To become a member of a Senior Center, one need only fill out an application. 

The sole requirement for membership is that a person be at least fifty-five years old or be married 

to a member who is at least fifty-five years old. People who use the Senior Centers do not reside 

there, and all of the programs are voluntary. 

Many of the programs at the Senior Centers are organized and sponsored by private 

individuals or organizations. Senior center policies permit non-member groups to use the centers 

·The Honorable Thomas M. Reavley, Senior Circuit Judge, United States Court of 

Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, sitting by designation. 

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for classes and other activities if the subject matter is "of interest to senior citizens." 

Alternatively, groups may use the Senior Centers without regard to this subject matter 

requirement ifthey are composed of seventy-five percent or more senior citizens. Nonmembers 

or persons under fifty-five years of age may conduct classes, and people who deliver lectures or 

teach classes are also permitted to distnl>ute literature. 

The range of subjects that qualify as being "of interest to senior citizens" is quite broad. 

The Senior Centers' activities catalogs list many of the programs that meet this requirement, such 

as Amateur Radio, Ceramics, Chinese, Choral Group, Economics, El Abuelo--The Clown of 

Spanish Culture, Fishing, Medicare/Health Insurance Counseling, Myth of the Hanging Tree, and 

Plants and People ofNew Mexico. The catalogs also include a number of classes and 

presentations in which religion or religious matters are the primary focus: Bible as Literature, 

Myths and Stories About the Millennium, Theosophy, and A Passover Commemoration (an 

oratorio). The catalogs encourage "ideas for new classes and programs" as well 

On March 24, 1994, Pastor Kimbro, a citizen over the age of fifty-five, requested 

permission from Kathleen Stark, the supervisor of the Bear Canyon Senior Center, to show a 

two-hour film entitled kms. The film recounts the life of Jesus Christ as descnl>ed in the Gospel 

of Luke. At the conclusion of the story, a voice-over narrator makes affirming statements such 

as, "Jesus is exactly who he claimed to be--the Son of the Lord, the Savior of all mankind." The 

narrator then invites viewers to adopt the Christian religion and to join him in a short prayer. 

Kimbro also requested permission to give away giant-print New Testaments to persons attending 

the film. 

On May 18, 1994, after reviewing the film, Mark Sanchez, the City's Deputy Director of 

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Family and Community Services, denied Kimbro's requests. Sanchez stated that City policy 

prohibited the use of Senior Centers ''for sectarian instruction or as a place for religious worship." 

The City adopted this policy to conform with the terms of the Older Americans Act. The Older 

Americans Act provides federal funding to the states for multipurpose senior centers, but requires, 

as a condition for receiving such funding, that the ''facility will not be used and is not intended to 

be used for sectarian instruction or as a place for religious worship." 42 U.S.C.A § 

3027(aXI4XAXiv). 

In keeping with this directive, Senior Center personnel screen programs for sectarian 

instruction or religious worship before allowing them at the Senior Centers. Senior Center 

employees also monitor presentations for religious content by sitting in on classes and entertaining 

objections from Senior Center members who call attention to expression falling into one of these 

forbidden categories. When Senior Center employees determine that presentations are too 

religious in nature, they intervene to stop the presentations. There are no official criteria or 

written standards to assist them in deciding whether or not expression constitutes "sectarian 

instruction" or 'l'eligious worship." 

Church on the Rock filed this suit seeking declaratory and injunctive relief The district 

court granted summary judgment in favor of the City. In its decision, the court assumed without 

deciding that the Senior Center is a designated limited public forum. The court stated that the 

purpose of the Senior Center does not include sectarian instruction, and that the primary purpose 

of the film kms is to proselytize. The court concluded that the film constitutes sectarian 

instruction and that the City may therefore exclude the film on the ground that its subject matter is 

not within the purpose of the Senior Centers. The court also held that the City's restriction is not 

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viewpoint-based because the City does not permit sectarian instruction from ~ religious 

perspective. This appeal followed. 

n. The Degree of First Amendment Protection Afforded to the Expression 

We review the district court's grant of summary judgment de novo. Cannon y. City and 

County ofDenver, 998 F.2d 867, 870 (lOth Cir. 1993). We begin our analysis by noting that the 

speech in question is entitled to First Amendment protection. It is well established that religious 

worship and discussion are forms of speech and association protected by the First Amendment. 

Widmar y. Vincent, 454 U.S. 263, 269 (1981); Heffron y International Soc. for Krishna 

Consciousness, 452 U.S. 640, 647 (1981). The City argues that the proselytizing religious speech 

in the film k.ms enjoys a lesser degree of First Amendment protection than does religious speech 

that is not intended to recruit new believers. The Supreme Court, however, has rejected the 

notion that speech about religion, religious speech designed to win converts, and religious 

worship by persons already converted should be treated differently under the First Amendment. 

Widmar, 454 U.S. at 269 n.6; see also Lamb's Chapel y. Center Moriches Union Free'School 

District, 113 S. Ct. 2141, 2148 (1993) (describing the fear that proselytizing by a "radical" church 

might cause unrest as "difficult to defend as a reason to deny the presentation of a religious point 

of view about a subject the District otherwise makes open to discussion on District property''). 

The City's policy, then, restricts speech that is entitled full protection under the First Amendment. 

m. The Nature of the Forum 

The government's ability to restrict protected speech by private persons on government 

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property depends, in part, on the nature of the forum Cornelius y. NAACP Le&al Defense & 

Educ. Fund, 473 U.S. 788, 797 (1985). The three types of forums that may exist on government 

property are traditional public forums, designated public forums, and nonpublic forums. hi. at 

802. Traditional public forums are places such as streets and parks that ''by long tradition ... 

have b.een devoted to assembly·and debate." Perry Educ. Assn. y. Perry Local Educators' Assn., 

460 U.S. 37, 45 (1983). Designated public forums are those "created by government designation 

of a place or channel of communication for use by the public at large for assembly and speech, for 

use by certain speakers, or for the discussion of certain subjects." Cornelius, 4 73 U.S. at 802. 

Thus, designated public forums may be limited in terms of participants and in terms of subject 

matter. University facilities opened for meetings of registered student organizations qualify as a 

designated public forum, Widmar, 454 U.S. at 267-68, as do public school classrooms that are 

available to the general public outside of school hours for limited purposes, Lamb's Chapel, 113 

S. Ct. 2141, 2146-47 .. In Rosenber&ery. Rector & Visitors ofUniv. ofva., 115 S. Ct. 2510 

(1995), the Supreme Court treated a university's student activities fund as a designated public 

forum, albeit ''more in a metaphysical than in a spatial or geographic sense." hi. at 2517. A 

nonpublic forum is government property that is not by tradition or designation a forum for public 

communication. ~' 460 U.S. at 46. 

The Bear Canyon Senior Center is a designated public forum It may not be classified as a 

traditional public forum because it is not a traditional location of public debate or assembly. It is, 

however, a place that has been opened to the public for discussive purposes. The City has 

permitted lectures and classes on a broad range of subjects by both members and non-members at 

its Senior Centers. The City limits this designated public forum in two ways. First, the City 

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imposes an age requirement for participation, although this limitation is rather flexible where 

groups or spouses are involved. Second, the City limits the subject matter of presentations to 

topics "of interest to senior citizens." The subject matter limitation has also been extremely 

fleXIole in practice, as evidenced by the long list of diverse topics that have been presented in the 

past. 

IV. The Nature of the City's Restriction 

Having classified the type of forum involved, we now tum to the type of restriction that 

the City has imposed. The Senior Center Policies and Procedures Manual from the City's Office 

of Senior Affairs includes the following directive: ''It is prolnoited to use any OSA facility for 

sectarian instruction or as a place for religious worship." The City contends that this policy is a 

restriction based upon content, not viewpoint, because it disallows all sectarian instruction and 

religious worship in its Senior Centers, regardless of the particular religion involved. The 

Supreme Court, however, has rejected similar arguments. In Lamb's Chapel, for example, the 

Court noted that the mere fact that a regulation categorically treats all religions alike does not 

answer the critical question of whether viewpoint discrimination exists between religious and nonreligious expression. 113 S. Ct. at 214 7. Here, the City had already opened the doors of its 

Senior Centers to presentations about religion, such as The Bible as Literature and Myths and 

Stories About the Millennium The City allowed speakers at Senior Centers to discuss the Bible 

from a "strictly historical" perspective and to address religion as long as such presentations could 

be characterized as "a literature discussion or a philosophical discussion." The film J§us dealt 

with subject matter similar to that which would be included in a class on the Bible as literature. 

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The film ran afoul of City policy, however, by advocating the adoption of the Christian faith. In 

contrast, a film about Jesus's life that ended on a skeptical note and urged agnosticism or atheism 

would not have contravened the City's policy. Because "[t]he prohibited perspective, not the 

general subject matter" triggered the decision to bar the private expression, Rosenberger, 115 S. 

Ct. at 2517, the City's policy is properly analyzed as a viewpoint-based restriction on speech. 

Moreover, even if the City had not previously opened the Senior Centers to presentations 

on religious subjects, its policy would still amount to viewpoint discrimination. Any prohibition 

of sectarian instruction where other instruction is permitted is inherently non-neutral with respect 

to viewpoint. Instruction becomes "sectarian" when it manifests a preference for a set of religious 

beliefs. Because there is no nonreligious sectarian instruction (and indeed the concept is a 

contradiction in terms), a restriction prohibiting sectarian instruction intrinsically favors secularism 

at the expense of religion. Therefore, we conclude that the City's policy constitutes viewpoint 

discrimination. 

V. The Appropriate Level of Judicial Scrutiny 

The government bears a particularly heavy burden in justifying viewpoint-based 

restrictions in designated public forums. Viewpoint discrimination is "an egregious form of 

content discrimination." Rosenberger, 115 S. Ct. at 2516. Content-based restrictions are subject 

to strict scrutiny. ~United Statesy. Kokinda, 497 U.S. 720,726-727 (1990); ~, 460 U.S. 

at 46. Viewpoint-based restrictions receive even more critical judicial treatment. As the Supreme 

Court noted in Rosenberger: 

The necessities of confining a forum to the limited and legitimate purposes for 

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which it was created may justify the State in reserving it for certain groups or for 

the discussion of certain topics .... [I]n determining whether the State is acting to 

preserve the limits of the forum it has created so that the exclusion of a class of 

speech is legitimate, we have observed a distinction between, on the one hand, 

content discrimination, which may be permissible if it preserves the purposes of 

that limited forum, and, on the other hand, viewpoint discrimination, which is 

presumed impermissible when directed against speech otherwise within the forum's 

limitations. 

115 S. Ct. at 2516-2517 (citations omitted). While the Court did not explain what, precisely, the 

government must show in order to overcome this heavy presumption, it did indicate that the 

necessity of complying with another clause of the Constitution--the Establishment Clause--would 

excuse a viewpoint-based restriction on speech. Ida. at 2520. We understand Rosenber&er to 

mean that courts must examine viewpoint-based restrictions with an especially critical review of 

the government's asserted justifications for those restrictions. At a minimum, to survive strict 

scrutiny the City's policy must be '~arrowly drawn to effectuate a compelling state interest." 

~' 460 U.S. at 46. 

VI. The City's Justifications for its Policy 

The City offers three justifications for its policy prohibiting religious expression. First, the 

City asserts that the policy ensures conformity with the First Amendment's prohibition against 

state establishment of religion. While adherence to the Establishment Clause is a compelling 

government interest that may justify restrictions on speech in designated public forums, 

Rosenber&er, 115 S. Ct. at 2520; Widmar, 454 U.S. at 270-71, the City's restriction is not 

necessary to serve this interest. The Supreme Court has made it abundantly clear that providing 

equal access to a designated public forum for citizens engaging in religious expression and citizens 

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engaging in secular expression does not violate the Establishment Clause. Rosenberger, 115 S. 

Ct. at 2520-25; Lamb's Chapel, 113 S. Ct. at 2148; Widmar, 454 U.S. at 270-75. The 

government need only remain neutral, preferring neither religious nor secular expression over the 

other. ~Rosenberger, 115 S. Ct. at 2521-2522. Where the state does not sponsor the religious 

expression, the expression is made on government property that has been opened to the public for 

speech purposes, and permission is obtained through the same application process and on the 

same terms as secular groups, there is no violation of the Establishment Clause. Capitol Square 

Review and Advisory Bd. y. Pinette, 115 S. Ct. 2440, 2447 (1995). "[I]t is no violation for 

government to enact neutral policies that happen to benefit religion." ld.. Clearly, the 

Establishment Clause does not compel the City to bar sectarian instruction and religious worship 

from its Senior Centers. 

Second, the City asserts that its policy is necessary to remain in compliance with the Older 

Americans Act. To that end, the policy mirrors the language of the Older Americans Act, which 

requires as a condition for receiving federal funding assurances that a "facility will not be used and 

is not intended to be used for sectarian instruction or as a place for religious worship," 42 U.S.C. 

§ 3027(a)(14)(A)(iv). The fact that the City's policy is designed to conform with federal statutory 

requirements, however, does not shelter it from constitutional scrutiny. A city or state's desire 

for federal funds is not a compelling government interest. Thus, compliance with the Older 

Americans Act does not justify this viewpoint-based restriction on expression. In the context 

presented here, no government entity may permissibly control the viewpoint being expressed. See 

Rosenberger, 115 S. Ct. at 2518-19 (where the government expends public funds to convey its 

own message, it may say what it wishes; where private speech is concerned, the government may 

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not restrict expression on the basis ofviewpoint). 

Third, the City asserts that its policy is necessary to protect the senior citizens who use its 

centers. The City argues that the senior citizens who use the Senior Centers are members of a 

"captive audience" who are "vulnerable" to '~eligious proselytizing and coercion." Br. Appellees 

27. This claim is at best tenuous, and at worst insulting to senior citizens. People in this age 

group are not in need of special insulation from invitations to adopt a religious firith; nor are they, 

as a class, more likely than other citizens to be intimidated by such invitations. Moreover, the 

showing of the ~ film and the distnl>ution of giant-print New Testaments can hardly be 

construed as intimidating or coercive. People who choose to attend presentations at the Senior 

Centers do not become part of a captive audience: attendance at such programs is purely 

voluntary, and people are free to come and go as they please. Nor is there any implicit coercion 

to attend. This is not a situation akin to the school graduation ceremony at issue in ~ 

Weisman, where those who chose to absent themselves paid the price of missing "one oflife's 

most significant occasions." 112 S. Ct. 2649, 2659 (1992). Shielding senior citizens from 

religious speech, then, is also an inadequate justification for the City's policy. 

Vll. Tilton y. Richardson 

Finally, we address the City's contention that Tilton y. Richardson, 403 U.S. 672 (1971), 

which primarily concerned an Establishment Clause challenge to statutory language similar to that 

in the Older Americans Act, should be read to uphold the City's policy against a free speech 

challenge. We reject this reading of Tilton. In that case, the Court considered a federal grant and 

loan program for the construction of academic facilities at institutions of higher learning. The 

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terms of the act excluded facilities used for sectarian instruction or religious worship. The Court 

held, however, that a provision in the act that effectively allowed facilities to be converted entirely 

to religious purposes after twenty years violated the Establishment Clause. ld.. at 682-684. At no 

point did the Court address any free-speech challenge to the act, and nothing in the opinion 

implied that its decision upholding the remainder of the act against an Establishment Clause 

challenge could be extended to protect similar statutory language against a free-speech challenge. 

Furthermore, the Court revisited the Tilton case in Widmar and warned against such an expansive 

reading: "[N]othing in Illtml suggested a limitation on the State's capacity to maintain forums 

equally open to religious and other discussions. Cases before and after Ii1tml have acknowledged 

the right of religious speakers to use public forums on equal terms with others." 454 U.S. at 272 

n.12. 

vm. Conclusion 

The City of Albuquerque has failed to show a compelling interest that justifies its policy 

prohibiting sectarian instruction and religious worship at its Senior Centers. For that reason, we 

hold that the policy is an unconstitutional restriction on expression. We therefore REVERSE the 

judgment of the district court and enjoin the City from barring the showing of the film kms and 

the distn"bution ofNew Testaments at its Senior Centers. We also award reasonable attorney's 

fees to the appellants in the district court and on appeal, as provided under 42 U.S.C. § 1988, and 

remand this matter to the district court for the determination of appropriate fee amounts. 

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