Opinion ID: 782211
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Good News Club

Text: 35 Subsequent to our decision in Bronx Household I, the Supreme Court decided Good News Club v. Milford Central School. At issue in Good News Club was defendant Milford Central School's community use policy that prohibited the use of school premises by any individual or organization for religious purposes. 533 U.S. at 103, 121 S.Ct. 2093. Because of this policy the school refused to allow plaintiff Good News Club, a private Christian organization for children between the ages of six and 12, to use school premises for activities that included praying, singing, reading, and learning the Bible. The school denied plaintiff's request to use its facilities because it thought the kinds of activities proposed to be engaged in by the Good News Club were not a discussion of secular subjects such as child rearing, development of character and development of morals from a religious perspective, but were in fact the equivalent of religious instruction itself. Id. at 103-04, 121 S.Ct. 2093. 36 The Good News Club sued challenging the school's policy on First Amendment grounds. The district court granted the school's motion for summary judgment and we affirmed, reasoning that the exclusion of the Club's quintessentially religious activities was constitutional content discrimination, not unconstitutional viewpoint discrimination. Good News Club v. Milford Cent. Sch., 202 F.3d 502, 510-11 (2d Cir.2000). The Supreme Court granted certiorari to resolve the conflict among the circuits on the question whether speech can be excluded from a limited public forum on the basis of the religious nature of the speech. Good News Club, 533 U.S. at 105, 121 S.Ct. 2093. In the context of stating its intention to resolve that conflict, the Court mentioned our opinion in Bronx Household I and noted that it was on the same side of the split as Campbell v. St. Tammany's School Board, 206 F.3d 482 (5th Cir.2000), a decision relying in part on our opinion in Bronx Household I, and one which the Supreme Court subsequently vacated and remanded in light of Good News Club, see Campbell v. St. Tammany's Sch. Bd., 533 U.S. 913, 121 S.Ct. 2518, 150 L.Ed.2d 691 (2001). See Good News Club, 533 U.S. at 105-06, 121 S.Ct. 2093. 37 In reversing the judgment of this Court, a divided Supreme Court found that by excluding the meetings of the Good News Club while allowing other types of instruction on moral and ethical issues the school maintained an exclusionary policy that constitutes viewpoint discrimination. Id. at 107, 121 S.Ct. 2093. The majority characterized the Club's proposed activities as teaching morals and character from a religious perspective. It did not think something that is `quintessentially religious' or `decidedly religious in nature' cannot also be characterized properly as the teaching of morals and character development from a particular viewpoint. Id. at 111, 121 S.Ct. 2093. Because the school allowed teachings about morals and character from a variety of other, secular perspectives, the Court continued, the school could not legally exclude the Club's meetings solely because of the religious viewpoint it advocated. Id. at 111-12, 121 S.Ct. 2093. The Court concluded by stating, What matters for purposes of the Free Speech Clause is that we can see no logical difference in kind between the invocation of Christianity by the Club and the invocation of teamwork, loyalty, or patriotism by other associations to provide a foundation for their lessons. Id. at 111, 121 S.Ct. 2093. 38 Significantly, the majority found no meaningful distinction between the case before it and Lamb's Chapel v. Center Moriches Union Free School District, 508 U.S. 384, 113 S.Ct. 2141, 124 L.Ed.2d 352 (1993). Good News Club, 533 U.S. at 111-12, 121 S.Ct. 2093. In Lamb's Chapel, the Supreme Court held that a school could not prohibit an outside group's demonstration of a film about family values simply because the film addressed the issue from a religious perspective, where the school admittedly would have allowed demonstration of a film addressing family values from a secular perspective. 508 U.S. at 393-94, 113 S.Ct. 2141. The Good News Club majority reasoned that the Club — like the Lamb's Chapel plaintiffs — was seeking to address a subject otherwise permitted [in the school], the teaching of morals and character, from a religious standpoint. The fact that the Good News Club proposed to conduct the teaching through storytelling and prayer rather than through film, as in Lamb's Chapel, was an inconsequential distinction. 533 U.S. at 109-12, 121 S.Ct. 2093. 39 The dissenting members of the Supreme Court — Justices Stevens, Souter, and Ginsburg — perceived the speech at issue in Good News Club to be sufficiently different from that in Lamb's Chapel to require the opposite result. Justice Stevens drew a distinction between three types of speech for religious purposes: (1) religious speech that is simply speech about a particular topic from a religious point of view, such as the film at issue in Lamb's Chapel, (2) religious speech that amounts to worship, or its equivalent, and (3) an intermediate category that is aimed principally at proselytizing or inculcating belief in a particular religious faith. The Good News Club's meetings, in his estimation, fell into the third or proselytizing category. 533 U.S. at 130, 133, 121 S.Ct. 2093 (Stevens, J., dissenting). 40 Justice Souter was of the opinion that Good News intends to use the public school premises not for the mere discussion of a subject from a particular, Christian point of view, but for an evangelical service of worship calling children to commit themselves in an act of Christian conversion. Id. at 138, 121 S.Ct. 2093 (Souter, J., dissenting). He emphasized that the Club's intended activities included elements of worship that made the case as different from Lamb's Chapel as night from day. Id. at 137, 121 S.Ct. 2093. Justice Souter further observed that the Club's meetings opened and closed with prayer, and that at the heart of each meeting was the challenge, when the already saved children were invited to ask God for strength; and the invitation, when the teacher would invite the unsaved children to receive Jesus as their Savior from sin. Id. at 137-38, 121 S.Ct. 2093. This dissenting justice criticized the majority's characterization of the Club's activities as teaching of morals and character, from a religious standpoint as ignoring reality. Id. at 138-39, 121 S.Ct. 2093. 41 The Supreme Court majority was not persuaded by the distinction drawn by the dissenters between speech from a religious perspective on the one hand and worship or proselytizing on the other. It did agree with Justice Souter's description of the Club's activities, which we just related, but concluded that those activities do not constitute mere religious worship, divorced from any teaching of moral values. 533 U.S. at 112 n. 4, 121 S.Ct. 2093. The majority saw no reason to treat the Club's use of religion as something other than a viewpoint merely because of any evangelical message it conveys. Notwithstanding Justice Souter's forcefully expressed challenge, it explicitly rejected his characterization of the Club's activities as an evangelical service of worship, saying that [r]egardless of the label Justice Souter wishes to use, what matters is the substance of the Club's activities, which we conclude are materially indistinguishable from the activities in Lamb's Chapel and Rosenberger[ v. Rector and Visitors of Univ. of Va., 515 U.S. 819, 832, 115 S.Ct. 2510, 132 L.Ed.2d 700 (1995) (holding that a university's refusal to pay a third-party contractor for the printing costs of a student publication, based on the publication's religious editorials, was viewpoint discrimination)]. Id. IV Resolution of Instant Appeal A. Free Speech 42 Having laid out for purposes of comparison our holding in Bronx Household I and the Supreme Court's Good News Club opinion, we turn to an analysis of Bronx Household II, the appeal presently before us. We start with the holding of the trial court. In granting plaintiffs' motion for a preliminary injunction it relied on the Supreme Court's holding in Good News Club, believing that the activities proposed by the plaintiff church are similar to those in Good News Club. The trial court also thought that, after Good News Club, religious worship could not be treated as an inherently distinct type of activity, and was instead comparable to other activities involving ritual and ceremony, such as Boy and Girl Scout meetings. Additionally, it viewed the distinction between worship and other types of religious speech as one that cannot meaningfully be drawn by the courts. 43 Based upon our reading of the Supreme Court's decision in Good News Club, we do not think the district court abused its discretion in determining that the plaintiffs were substantially likely to establish that defendants violated their First Amendment free speech rights. Central to our conclusion is a candid acknowledgment of the factual parallels between the activities described in Good News Club and the activities at issue in the present litigation. 44 Although the majority in Good News Club characterized the Club's activity as the teaching of morals and character development from a particular viewpoint, 533 U.S. at 111, 121 S.Ct. 2093, this characterization cannot be divorced from Justice Souter's detailed description of the Club's activities that the majority adopted as accurate. Id. at 112 n. 4, 121 S.Ct. 2093. In Justice Souter's view, the Club's meetings did not consist solely of teaching, but also included elements consistent with an evangelical service of worship. Id. at 138, 121 S.Ct. 2093 (Souter, J., dissenting). The majority did not say that the meetings were somehow distinct from worship services, but simply observed that they were not mere religious worship, divorced from any teaching of moral values. Id. at 112 n. 4, 121 S.Ct. 2093. 45 We find no principled basis upon which to distinguish the activities set out by the Supreme Court in Good News Club from the activities that the Bronx Household of Faith has proposed for its Sunday meetings at Middle School 206B. Like the Good News Club meetings, the Sunday morning meetings of the church combine preaching and teaching with such quintessentially religious elements as prayer, the singing of Christian songs, and communion. The church's Sunday morning meetings also encompass secular elements, for instance, a fellowship meal during which church members may talk about their problems and needs. On these facts, it cannot be said that the meetings of the Bronx Household of Faith constitute only religious worship, separate and apart from any teaching of moral values. 533 U.S. at 112 n. 4, 121 S.Ct. 2093. 46 Because the Board of Education has authorized other groups, like scout groups, to undertake the teaching of morals and character development on school premises, there is a substantial likelihood that plaintiffs would be able to demonstrate that the Board cannot exclude, under Supreme Court precedent, the church from school premises on the ground that the church approaches the same subject from a religious viewpoint. Additionally, the defendants' school building use policy permits social, civic and recreational meetings and entertainments, and other uses pertaining to the welfare of the community, so long as these uses are non-exclusive and open to the public. Therefore, there is a substantial likelihood that plaintiffs would be able to demonstrate that the defendants cannot bar the church's proposed activities without engaging in unconstitutional viewpoint discrimination. 47 We hold the district court did not commit an error of law or fact and therefore did not abuse its discretion by determining that plaintiffs were substantially likely to establish that defendants violated their First Amendment free speech rights. Our ruling is confined to the district court's finding that the activities plaintiffs have proposed for their Sunday meetings are not simply religious worship, divorced from any teaching of moral values or other activities permitted in the forum. 48 We decline to review the trial court's further determinations that, after Good News Club, religious worship cannot be treated as an inherently distinct type of activity, and that the distinction between worship and other types of religious speech cannot meaningfully be drawn by the courts. We recognize that these conclusions are in obvious tension with our previous holding that a permissible distinction may be drawn between religious worship and other forms of speech from a religious viewpoint, Bronx Household I, 127 F.3d at 215, a proposition that was seriously undermined but not explicitly rejected in Good News Club. It is unnecessary for us to reach these issues in order to affirm the trial court's grant of a preliminary injunction in this case. 49 We pause, however, to note some unresolved issues that arise from the recent Supreme Court precedent that, as an appellate court, we are bound to follow. Would we be able to identify a form of religious worship that is divorced from the teaching of moral values? Should we continue to evaluate activities that include religious worship on a case-by-case basis, or should worship no longer be treated as a distinct category of speech? How does the distinction drawn in our earlier precedent between worship and other forms of speech from a religious viewpoint relate to the dichotomy suggested in Good News Club between mere worship on the one hand and worship that is not divorced from the teaching of moral values on the other? 50 Further, how would the state, without imposing its own views on religion, define which values are morally acceptable and which are not? And, if such a choice is impossible to make, would the state be required to permit the use of public school property by religious sects that preach ideas commonly viewed as hateful? When several religious groups seek to use the same property at the same time, would not the state have to choose between them? What criteria would govern that choice? In all of this process, is there not a danger of excessive entanglement by the state in religion? 51 How the Supreme Court answers these difficult questions will no doubt have profound implications for relations between church and state. The American experiment has flourished largely free of the religious strife that has stricken other societies because church and state have respected each other's autonomy. Religion and government thrive because each, conscious of the corrosive perils of intrusive entanglements, exercises restraint in making claims on the other. The beneficiaries are a diverse populace that enjoys religious liberty in a nation that honors the sanctity of that freedom. B. Establishment Clause 52 We must resolve one final issue, that is, whether it is substantially likely that defendants will not succeed in demonstrating that their denial of plaintiffs' application is necessary to avoid a violation of the Establishment Clause. 53 The First Amendment to the United States Constitution, applicable to the states under the Fourteenth Amendment, prohibits the enactment of any law respecting an establishment of religion. U.S. Const. amend I. Defendants maintain that, even if their actions infringe on plaintiffs' First Amendment rights, the infringement is justified because it is necessary to avoid an appearance of state endorsement of religion and excessive entanglement between state and religion, in violation of the Establishment Clause. 54 In Good News Club, the majority acknowledged that a state's interest in avoiding an Establishment Clause violation may be characterized as compelling, and therefore may justify content-based discrimination. 533 U.S. at 112, 121 S.Ct. 2093. The Court then noted that, although its precedent did not yet establish whether that interest may also justify viewpoint-based discrimination, it did not need to resolve the issue because the school did not have a valid Establishment Clause interest. Id. at 113, 121 S.Ct. 2093. In so ruling, the Supreme Court emphasized that the Good News Club's meetings were held after school hours, were not sponsored by the school, and were open to all students who obtained parental consent. It also noted that the school had made its forum equally available to other organizations. Id. 55 In addition, the Supreme Court rejected the argument that the young age of the children attending the elementary school impermissibly increased the danger of misperception of endorsement, stating that the Court had never extended [its] Establishment Clause jurisprudence to foreclose private religious conduct during nonschool hours merely because it takes place on school premises where elementary school children may be present. Id. at 115, 121 S.Ct. 2093. The Court emphasized that even if [it] were to inquire into the minds of schoolchildren in [that] case, [it could not] say the danger that children would misperceive the endorsement of religion [was] any greater than the danger that they would perceive a hostility toward the religious viewpoint if the Club were excluded from the public forum. Id. at 118, 121 S.Ct. 2093. 56 Relying on the Supreme Court's Good News Club rationale, the district court here concluded that there was a substantial likelihood that the church would be able to demonstrate that the School Board does not have a valid Establishment Clause interest because the proposed meetings: (1) occur on Sunday mornings, during nonschool hours; (2) are not endorsed by the School District; (3) are not attended by any school employee; (4) are open to all members of the public; (5) and there is no evidence that any school children would be on the school premises on Sunday mornings or would attend the meetings. To this list the district court might have added that the church apparently intended to pay rent for the use of the space. The district court believed that by allowing the meetings defendants were more likely to demonstrate neutrality toward religion, and would therefore probably not violate the Establishment Clause. 57 In light of the Supreme Court's refusal to find a valid Establishment Clause interest in Good News Club, and the strong factual similarities between this case and Good News Club, the district court's ruling is adequately supported at this stage of the litigation. The dissent's conclusion to the contrary, in our estimation, misapplies the necessarily deferential standard of review. We hasten to add, however, that this issue is factual and its resolution in favor of plaintiffs now does not foreclose the possibility that defendants may, with further development of the record, ultimately prevail on it. 1