Court Opinion

ID: 9499220
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 17:41:17.360602+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:59:21.357959
License: Public Domain

TALLMAN, Circuit Judge,
dissenting:
The “Religious Use” exclusion is impermissible viewpoint discrimination because Contra Costa County (the “County”) opened its public meeting room at the Antioch Library to the community in order “to encourage [its use] for educational, cultural and community related meetings, programs and activities.”1 Notwithstand*1217ing the broad and inclusive policy it approved, the County has unlawfully excluded certain members of the community from engaging in activities that fall squarely within the policy’s scope by examining the way an applicant’s viewpoints are expressed. Political organizations like the local Democratic Party are admitted. Religious groups are not.
The County draws an arbitrary line in the sand, arguing that it has the right to decide what constitutes a religious service while failing to set forth specific guidelines defining the term. It contends that the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment requires County officials to exclude those who wish to engage in worship behind the closed doors of its library meeting rooms. My colleagues in the majority accept the County’s skewed view of the First Amendment by upholding a policy which on its face and as applied produces the very entanglement the County ostensibly seeks to avoid, and in doing so the court creates a conflict with the Second Circuit and contradicts Supreme Court precedent. I respectfully dissent.
I
“[Rjeligious worship and discussion ... are forms of speech and association protected by the First Amendment.” Widmar v. Vincent, 454 U.S. 263, 269, 102 S.Ct. 269, 70 L.Ed.2d 440 (1981). “The Constitution forbids a State to enforce certain exclusions from a forum generally open to the public, even if it was not required to create the forum in the first place.” Id. at 267-68, 102 S.Ct. 269. Both parties agree that religious activities, including worship, are speech protected by the First Amendment. However, the County adopts the views of Justice Stevens, dissenting in Good News Club v. Milford Central School, 533 U.S. 98, 121 S.Ct. 2093, 150 L.Ed.2d 151 (2001), when it argues that religious service or worship may be parsed from other religious speech — that religious worship is a category wholly separate from general religious speech. See id. at 130, 121 S.Ct. 2093 (Stevens, J., dissenting). According to the County, allowing religious services in its library meeting rooms would “start[ ] the courts down a slippery slope whereby all public buildings will be converted into houses of worship for the conduct of religious services.” Id. at 139, 121 S.Ct. 2093 (Souter, J., dissenting).
As support for its assertion, the County cites two Supreme Court cases, a Second Circuit case, and an Eastern District of Louisiana case, none of which address whether mere religious worship should or could be parsed from other types of religious speech. See Good News Club, 533 U.S. at 112 n. 4, 121 S.Ct. 2093 (concluding that a religious club’s activities “[did] not constitute mere religious worship, divorced from any teaching of moral values,” and therefore the parsing issue was not reached); Lamb’s Chapel v. Center Moriches Union Free Sch. Dist., 508 U.S. 384, 388 n. 2, 113 S.Ct. 2141, 124 L.Ed.2d 352 (1993) (noting that the petitioner church did not challenge a school district’s denial to use a high school for Sunday services, so the validity of that denial was not before the court); Bronx Household of Faith v. Board of Educ. of the City of New York, 331 F.3d 342, 355 (2d Cir.2003) (declining to address whether religious worship is a distinct type of activity separate from other religious speech); and Campbell v. St. Tammany Parish Sch. Bd., 2003 WL 21783317, at *9 (E.D.La. July 30, 2003) (declining to reach the issue of whether “mere religious worship” could be precluded from a particular forum).
*1218Faith Center agrees that its meetings contain religious worship, and my colleagues find comfort in the fact that Faith Center explicitly listed worship activities on flyers for the meeting. But words on a flyer make no difference in the disposition of this case. The next religious group wishing to intermingle worship activities, admonished as to the consequences of such advertising, may not be so explicit about its meeting itinerary, or may simply call its worship activities religious “proselytizing,” an acceptable form of speech under the policy according to the court. Maj. Op. at 1213. Regardless of what Faith Center chooses to print on its flyers, or what it chooses to call its activities, worship cannot logically be parsed from all other forms of religious expression in the way the County intends.
When compared to similar cases, such as Bronx Household and Campbell, where private religious groups conducted religious services in a government-owned forum, Faith Center’s service cannot properly be described as “mere religious worship, divorced from any teaching of moral values.” See Bronx Household, 331 F.3d at 346-48, 354 (affirming a preliminary injunction allowing a religious group equal access to public school classrooms after hours where the group’s religious services could not be separated from a teaching of moral values); Campbell, 2003 WL 21783317, at *1-3, 9 (granting summary judgment to a religious group that wished to use a public school after hours, opened as a limited forum, for its quintessentially religious activities). Nor is it correct to say that Faith Center agreed its worship activities fall under the ambiguous, undefined category acknowledged by the Supreme Court as mere religious worship.2
A
Although the Second Circuit in Bronx Household declined to answer the question whether religious worship may be parsed from other religious speech, the court was concerned as to how the judiciary or any government official could validly make the distinction. See 331 F.3d at 355 (“Would we be able to identify a form of religious worship that is divorced from the teaching of moral values?”). The court noted the dichotomy suggested by the Supreme Court in Good News Club between “mere” religious worship on the one hand and “worship that is not divorced from the teaching of moral values on the other.” Id. “Further,” the Second Circuit asked, “how would the state, without imposing its own views on religion, define which values are morally acceptable and which are not?” Id. This is the point of eschewing government decision-making based on the view*1219point at issue in the First Amendment Establishment Clause arena.
Here, the district court relied heavily, and properly so, on Widmar and Bronx Household for its conclusion that religious worship may not be parsed from other religious speech. Faith Center Church, 2005 WL 1220947, at *5. The County attempts to distinguish Widmar by arguing that the Supreme Court’s comments about religious worship apply only to “open” forums, such as the forum in Widmar. However, the Widmar Court’s analysis of “religious worship” was not based on the characteristics of the forum at issue, but the difficulty the government and the courts would have in drawing the line between religious worship and other religious speech:
There is no indication when “singing hymns, reading scripture, and teaching biblical principles” ... cease to be “singing, teaching, and reading”- — all apparently forms of “speech,” despite their religious subject matter — and become unprotected “worship.”
[Ejven if the distinction drew an arguably principled line, it is highly doubtful that it would lie within the judicial competence to administer. Merely to draw the distinction would require [the government] — and ultimately the courts — to inquire into the significance of words and practices to different religious faiths, and in varying circumstances by the same faith. Such inquiries would tend inevitably to entangle the [government] with religion in a manner forbidden by our cases.
Widmar, 454 U.S. at 269 n. 6, 102 S.Ct. 269(citations omitted).
The majority opinion here cites several cases where the Supreme Court has drawn a distinction between general religious speech and speech about religion. Maj. Op. at 1213. These cases involve speech before students at public schools and speech by government employees in the work-place. However, not only do the cited cases involve evangelical speech to a captive audience, but they are also instances where even proselytizing may be excluded. No amount of general religious speech is allowed in public schools or government workplaces during the business day if it is evangelical in design. Speech about religion is permissible in such limited fora where the purpose of the forum is very specific — school is for academic learning and the workplace is for work.
The Antioch Library opened its meeting room for a much broader purpose. My colleagues concede that evangelical speech is permissible under the “Religious Use” exclusion if it conveys a viewpoint on an otherwise permissible topic, and acknowledge that the distinction the County must draw here is more subtle than in any of the cases the opinion cites. Maj. Op. at 1213. But that is as far as the opinion goes in this analysis. It does not attempt to answer the insoluble riddle of how the County could parse religious speech which conveys a viewpoint on an otherwise permissible topic with mere religious worship that is impermissible speech according to the court. Instead, it claims that Faith Center has solved the riddle for us since Faith Center specifically calls its activities “worship.” Under this reasoning, if Faith Center says what it is doing is worship, then the County need not make the distinction.
But this flawed analysis blithely ignores other similarly situated religious groups that may not make such a nice admission to the County in their applications to use the room. While the district court granted the preliminary injunction based on Faith Center’s “as applied” challenge to the policy, Faith Center also brought a facial challenge to the policy. Ignoring the prelimi*1220nary injunction’s mandate that the County open its library meeting room to any “similarly situated individual or entity” may provide a neat literal shorthand allowing my colleagues to bypass the need for parsing religious worship from other religious speech in this specific instance. However, the majority’s reasoning ignores the plain reality that some County official must make the call with no articulated standard to guide a determination of what constitutes “religious services” under the policy.
Announcing the strange rule that “Religious worship services can be distinguished from other forms of religious speech by the adherents themselves,” Maj. Op. at 1214, creates a system whereby the applicant itself decides what constitutes worship. Under the policy, the County will still have to determine what is and what is not religious worship in instances where a group does not identify in such detail its activity, and the County is not off the hook even if a group does say it will engage in religious worship. Creative word-play cannot avoid the reality that worship is intangible, and even what Faith Center itself determines is religious worship may not be worship to another. See Bronx Household, 331 F.3d at 354-55 (finding “no principled basis upon which to distinguish [such] activities”).
The County chooses to exclude Faith Center because it believes that allowing religious worship within its library meeting room violates the Establishment Clause. It contends that patrons would then perceive the County to endorse a particular religion. . Given the County’s position, our court’s newly created rule is nonsensical because the religious groups that the County claims will cause it to violate the Establishment Clause are the ones who would decide what speech constitutes a violation of the policy. I doubt the County had such a rule in mind when it created its “Religious Use” exclusion. The truth is that neither the County nor Faith Center can validly parse religious worship from religious speech under the County’s broad and undefined policy.
B
Any attempt by the County to parse religious worship from other religious speech would trigger the inherent Establishment Clause entanglement problems it seeks to avoid. Justice Souter, in his dissenting opinion to Good News Club, described the religious activities in Good News Club as including elements of worship, such as prayer, a “challenge” that invited “saved” children to ask God for strength, and an “invitation” that asked “unsaved” children to receive Jesus Christ as their Savior from sin. 533 U.S. at 137-38, 121 S.Ct. 2093 (Souter, J., dissenting). The majority in Good News Club agreed with Justice Souter’s recitation of the elements of the religious activities at issue, but decided that these activities do not constitute mere religious worship. Id. at 112 n. 4, 121 S.Ct. 2093.3
Faith Center’s religious service consists of prayer, praise, and a sermon, consistent with the type of worship in Good News Club. Faith Center’s worship activities include discussion of moral character and other secular subjects — well within the *1221policy’s scope, and not mere religious worship, which has yet to be adequately defined by any court. In order to divorce prohibited religious services from other permissible religious activities to be conducted in the meeting room, the County would need to define what constitutes mere religious worship, as well as how many secular topics are required to be discussed or contemplated before mere religious worship becomes something more. I wish the County the best of luck in that drafting endeavor.
Justice Scalia, in a concurring opinion to Good News Club, examined our ability to distinguish religious worship from other religious speech. He concluded that the distinction between worship and other religious speech has “no intelligible content” and no “relevance” to the constitutional issue. Good News Club, 533 U.S. at 126, 121 S.Ct. 2093 (Scalia, J., concurring) (quoting Widmar, 454 U.S. at 269 n. 6, 102 S.Ct. 269). Justice Scalia noted that the difficulty of distinction is proven by the inability of the Justices to agree on what category of religious speech was at issue in Good News Club. Id. at 126-27, 121 S.Ct. 2093 (Scalia, J., concurring). He then added that “applying the distinction would require state monitoring of priyate, religious speech with a degree of pervasiveness that we have previously found unacceptable.” Id. at 127, 121 S.Ct. 2093 (Scalia, J., concurring).
There are as many ways to conduct “religious services” as there are religions in the world, not accounting for different sects of the same religion. The Supreme Court has said that the government “would risk greater entanglement by attempting to enforce its exclusion of religious worship.” Widmar, 454 U.S. at 272 n. 11, 102 S.Ct. 269 (quotation marks and citation omitted). The government “would need to determine which words and activities fall within religious worship” and “[t]his ... could prove an impossible task in an age where many and various beliefs meet the constitutional definition of religion.” Id. (quotation marks and citation omitted). The County cannot validly parse religious worship from other religious speech in trying to apply this policy without engaging in the very action it is trying to prevent— entangling itself in religion in a manner that violates the First Amendment.
C
Even if we were to ignore the inherent entanglement the exclusion would cause, the exclusionary portion of the policy is nonetheless facially invalid. While the County excludes religious services in its library meeting rooms, it does not define “religious services.” How can a County librarian validly parse religious worship from allowable religious speech when the librarian does not have the proper guidelines by which he or she may recognize the offending conduct?4
The opinion never addresses what the County would do if another group were to conduct worship services without delineating its activities on a flyer. Are we then to accept that a librarian will know worship when he or she sees it? Are we now to declare that the County’s librarians are experts in theology and world religion? Perhaps they might consult the books on the shelves of their libraries. Or are we only excluding traditional Christian wor*1222ship because that is what is most familiar to the officials in Contra Costa County? Under the policy before us, the power to decide the definition of a religious service lies squarely in the lap of government officials, and that is the crux of the problem.
Separating religious worship from other religious speech inevitably leads to state entanglement in religion that would not otherwise exist should private religious groups be allowed the freedom to conduct activities consistent with the goal of the policy, given reasonable time, place, and manner restrictions also imposed on all other groups wishing to use the public library meeting room. See Widmar, 454 U.S. at 278, 102 S.Ct. 269 (noting that the government’s opening of its property to various forms of speech may “establish reasonable time, place, and manner regulations”). Religious worship is the expression of beliefs, convictions, viewpoints, and morality, and its means of practice are as diverse as the people who make up this nation. No government official has the ability to decide the constitution of religious worship. Any attempt would inevitably entangle the official in the Bill of Rights.
II
The majority opinion not only ignores the obvious state entanglement problems the exclusion of worship presents, but it also holds that religious services cannot include speech which expresses viewpoints on otherwise secular subject matter, a conclusion contrary to the weight of Supreme Court authority. My court agrees with the County that the exclusion is content based and viewpoint neutral. Because my colleagues conclude the County has created a limited public forum,5 the opinion holds that the content-based exclusion is permissible.
Based on its argument that religious worship may be parsed from other religious speech, the County contends that the policy excludes a whole category of speech with a distinct content, apparently believing that all religious worship speaks of the same subject matter and contains no particular viewpoint on otherwise permissible secular topics. I disagree. The speech at issue here may include discussion of religious viewpoints on a variety of otherwise includible subjects, and to exclude this speech would be classic viewpoint discrimination. “Viewpoint discrimination is a form of content discrimination in which ‘the government targets not subject matter, but particular views taken by speakers on a subject.’ ” Children of the Rosary v. City of Phoenix, 154 F.3d 972, 980 (9th Cir.1998) (quoting Rosenberger v. Rector and Visitors of Univ. of Va., 515 U.S. 819, 829, 115 S.Ct. 2510, 132 L.Ed.2d 700 (1995)).
Although a speaker may be excluded from a nonpublic forum if he wishes to address a topic not encompassed within the purpose of the forum ... or if he is not a member of the class of speakers for whose especial benefit the forum was created ..., the government violates the First Amendment when it denies access to a speaker solely to suppress the point *1223of view he espouses on an otherwise includible subject.
Lamb’s Chapel, 508 U.S. at 394, 113 S.Ct. 2141 (quoting Cornelius v. NAACP Legal Def. & Educ. Fund, Inc., 473 U.S. 788, 806, 105 S.Ct. 3439, 87 L.Ed.2d 567 (1985)) (alterations omitted).
The Supreme Court in Good News Club saw “no reason to treat the ... use of religion as something other than a viewpoint merely because of any evangelical message it conveys.” 533 U.S. at 112 n. 4, 121 S.Ct. 2093. “[T]he First Amendment forbids the government to regulate speech in ways that favor some viewpoints or ideas at the expense of others.” Id. (quoting City Council of Los Angeles v. Taxpayers for Vincent, 466 U.S. 789, 804, 104 S.Ct. 2118, 80 L.Ed.2d 772 (1984)). Common sense dictates that religious worship can include exploration of secular topics from a religious point of view, as Faith Center’s meeting demonstrates. Enforcing the exclusion is therefore viewpoint discrimination and Faith Center has made a clear showing of probable success on the merits of its claim.
A
The County argues that the exclusion “is directed to a distinct type of subject matter and separate category of speech, not a particular religious ‘viewpoint’ on an otherwise permissible subject.” It represents its prohibition as “permissible content-based restrictions” which, for example, “exclude speech based on topic, such as politics or religion, regardless of the particular stand the speaker takes on the topic.” DiLoreto v. Downey Unified Sch. Dist. Bd. of Educ., 196 F.3d 958, 969 (9th Cir.1999). The County’s argument is based on the erroneous belief that religious service may be parsed from other religious speech, and that “religious services” is a category of speech unto itself, and therefore qualifies as a whole topic of speech that is excluda-ble under content-based discrimination.
First, as previously stated, the notion that religious worship may be parsed from other religious speech ignores the weight of Supreme Court authority against it. See supra § I. Second, even if the County were somehow able to parse religious worship from other religious speech, and all religious worship is treated alike under the exclusion, the County does not explain why religious services cannot include religious viewpoints on permissible subjects. See Lamb’s Chapel, 508 U.S. at 393, 113 S.Ct. 2141 (rejecting the Second Circuit’s determination that a policy is viewpoint neutral because all religions and all uses for religious purposes are treated alike).
Faith Center’s religious service consists of singing songs, engaging in prayer, and sermons about community and moral character from a Biblical viewpoint. Community and moral character are two secular subjects that would be includable under the policy’s broad scope. Yet the County and my colleagues assert that Faith Center’s worship cannot express a viewpoint because of the way ideas are communicated — through prayer and sermon.
As an example of what it deems to be the distinction between subject matter and viewpoint discrimination, the County argues- that “true viewpoint discrimination ... would occur if the County permitted Christian . or Buddhist religious services but disallowed Muslim or Jewish services.” However, the County must therefore assume all religious services, regardless of denomination, do not communicate ideas on topics that are permissible under the policy, such as moral character. The “exclusion of several views ... is just as offensive to the First Amendment as exclusion of only one.” Rosenberger, 515 U.S. at 831, 115 S.Ct. 2510.
*1224B
The religious service portion of Faith Center’s meeting is not unlike the services at issue in Bronx Household and Campbell, which were not mere religious worship. The Eastern District of Louisiana in Campbell noted that “[i]t is difficult to imagine any religious service, no matter how traditional or nontraditional that does not include sermons, homilies or lessons directed at moral and ethical conduct or how one should live one’s life.” 2003 WL 21783317, at *9. The Second Circuit in Bronx Household concluded that even the “quintessentially religious” services at issue were not “only religious worship, separate and apart from any teaching of moral values.” 331 F.3d at 354 (citing Good News Club, 533 U.S. at 112 n. 4, 121 S.Ct. 2093). Both cases were decided within the framework of Good News Club, where the Supreme Court disagreed with the suggestion that something quintessentially religious or decidedly religious in nature “cannot also be characterized properly as the teaching of morals and character development from a particular viewpoint.” 533 U.S. at 111, 121 S.Ct. 2093.
Although my colleagues take pains to distinguish it, Bronx Household parallels this ease in many ways and is instructive on the interpretation of the precedent set by Good News Club. The Bronx Household of Faith applied to rent space in a public school in New York for Sunday morning meetings that included, at least in part, activities that can fairly be described as religious worship. Bronx Household, 331 F.3d at 345. The New York City Board of Education issued a policy similar to the one in this case, allowing community groups to meet in school classrooms after hours for “social, civic and recreational meetings and entertainment, and other uses pertaining to the welfare of the community.” Id. at 348. The church group characterized its meeting as a “service consisting] of the singing of Christian hymns and songs, prayer, fellowship with other church members and Biblical preaching and teaching, communion, sharing of testimonies and social fellowship among the church members.” Id. at 347. Bronx Household filed a motion for a preliminary injunction to enjoin the Board of Education from enforcing its policy prohibiting “religious services or religious instruction” at the school after hours. Id. at 346. The district court granted the preliminary injunction and the Second Circuit affirmed. Id. at 348, 357.
The Second Circuit concluded that, after Good News Club, the district court did not abuse its discretion in determining that Bronx Household was substantially likely to establish that the Board of Education violated its First Amendment free speech rights. Id. at 354. While the majority in Good News Club characterized the Good News Club’s activities as “the teaching of morals and character development from a particular viewpoint,” 533 U.S. at 111, 121 S.Ct. 2093, the Bronx Household court determined that this characterization “cannot be divorced from Justice Souter’s detailed description [in his dissent] of the Club’s activities [as worship] that the majority adopted as accurate.” Bronx Household, 331 F.3d at 354 (citing Good News Club, 533 U.S. at 112 n. 4, 121 S.Ct. 2093). The Second Circuit could not find any meaningful distinction between the activities Bronx Household was engaging in, and the activities at issue in Good News Club, where the Supreme Court held that excluding a club’s religious activities from school classrooms otherwise open to community groups was discrimination based on viewpoint. Id.
Faith Center’s religious activities and those in Bronx Household and Good News Club, are likewise too similar to make any *1225meaningful distinction that would immunize the County from First Amendment violations. Whether “mere religious worship” can be defined or not, the County’s assertion that the prohibition of “religious services” is nothing more than content-based discrimination runs counter to the precedent set in Good News Club.
The majority opinion attempts to distinguish Bronx Household in two ways: (1) Faith Center’s activities do not contain “elements of worship” that further secular activities as in Bronx Household, but consist entirely of praise and religious worship; and (2) the forum in Bronx Household was different because the meeting was held in a school classroom after hours rather than a library meeting room during the day. Maj. Op. at 1211-12. But this reasoning is based on a faulty premise and an irrelevant issue.
1
Faith Center has never claimed that its services are mere religious worship, devoid of speech on permissible secular topics.6 Faith Center specifically argues that its activities are similar to those in Bronx Household, in which the Sunday morning meeting services contained the “singing of Christian hymns and songs, prayer ... Biblical preaching and teaching, communion, sharing of testimonies and social fellowship among the church members.” 351 F.3d at 347. The only differences between the church’s activities in Bronx Household and those of Faith Center is that the Bronx Household church did not call its activities “worship” and failed to conveniently separate on a flyer the “worship” portion of its activities with a fellowship meal discussing secular topics. Id. at 347, 354.
Apparently, this is enough for my colleagues to declare that these cases are so dissimilar that to reverse the district court here would not be creating a circuit split. They are wrong. Framing the argument in this manner repeats the same analytical mistake committed by the University of Missouri in Widmar:
The question is not whether the creation of a religious forum would violate the Establishment Clause. The University has opened its facilities for use by student groups, and the question is whether it can now exclude groups because of the content of their speech.
454 U.S. at 273, 102 S.Ct. 269.
The common issue in all of these cases is what types of activities encompass a religious worship service. Faith Center explains that during its service Pastor Hattie Mae Hopkins may deliver a sermon, and the group may pray and sing religious songs. Not only are these activities the same as those at issue in Bronx Household, thus lending credence to the notion that the two cases are in fact indistinguishable, but parsing out the actual nature of the worship clarifies the answer to a question my colleagues never bother to ask: why is religious worship not speech containing viewpoints on otherwise permissible secular topics?
Singing a religious song may very well be akin to singing about morality according to religious tenets. Praying is usually speech containing praise to a higher being, but may also contain personal characterizations of one’s own life, wishes, hopes, or concerns. Pastor Hopkins’s sermon is the clearest example of religious speech which expresses a viewpoint on otherwise permissible secular topics. One can imagine the variety of subject matter that could be included in a sermon' — money, family, love, *1226or avoiding drugs and alcohol, to name a few. The list is endless.
Instead, the opinion categorizes all of Faith Center’s worship activities into one neat box and then calls it impermissible speech. Yet it never examines the nature of that speech.
2
The opinion also distinguishes Bronx Household by where the meeting rooms are located. Comparing this case to Bronx Household brings forth the inevitable question as to whether there is a difference between non-disruptive meetings held in a public meeting room during library hours and meetings held in an empty classroom or auditorium on public school grounds after school or on weekends. Despite any facial distinctions, Faith Center’s religious services do not lose their character as communication on permitted subject matter from a religious viewpoint simply because they are held in a library meeting room open to public use rather than at a school after hours. It is important to emphasize that the County has never argued that noise from Faith Center’s religious activities disturbed the peace of other library patrons elsewhere in the building. Unlike the cases in which groups were allowed on a public school campus to hold meetings, the policy did not restrict the use of the library meeting room to after hours when the stacks and reading area were closed.
The County argues that because the library is open to the public during the hours in which Faith Center wishes to hold its meetings, library patrons would come to believe that the County is endorsing Faith Center’s religious service. Looking at the context of Faith Center’s meetings, a reasonable observer, “aware of the history and context of the community and forum,” would no more believe that the County was endorsing Faith Center’s meeting than it would believe the County was endorsing the Boy Scouts, the Sierra Club, or Narcotics Anonymous. See Good News Club, 533 U.S. at 119, 121 S.Ct. 2093 (quoting Capitol Square Review & Advisory Bd. v. Pinette, 515 U.S. 753, 779-90, 115 S.Ct. 2440, 132 L.Ed.2d 650 (1995) (O’Conner, J., concurring)). Our court says that “[t]he County reasonably could conclude that the controversy and distraction of religious worship within the Antioch Library meeting room may alienate patrons and undermine the library’s purpose of making itself available to the whole community.” Maj. Op. at 1207. Yet the library opened itself up to another group which could easily be as controversial and distracting to some patrons — the East Contra Costa Democratic Club. Clearly, the opinion sees no problem with other types of controversial speech.
All meetings held at the Antioch Library are closed-door meetings. There is no evidence that Faith Center’s religious service was generally disruptive or that library patrons were bothered. The reasonable observer would be the library patron who knows the purpose for the meeting room, its policy, and its scope. This patron would be aware of the number of different community groups that have used the meeting room. Arguing that this informed observer would perceive a government endorsement of Faith Center’s activities just because of the possibility that he or she may hear some of what is going on in the room is akin to saying that this individual would perceive the County to be endorsing specific political speech when the East Contra Costa Democratic Club used the same room. There is simply “no realistic danger that the community would think that the [Library] was endorsing religion or any particular creed, and any benefit to religion or to the Church would have been *1227no more than incidental.” Lamb’s Chapel, 508 U.S. at 395, 113 S.Ct. 2141; see Widmar, 454 U.S. at 271, 102 S.Ct. 269 (holding that allowing equal access to religious groups would not be incompatible with a government’s compelling interest in avoiding an Establishment Clause problem).
The County further argues that cases like Bronx Household found no Establishment Clause violation because the meetings were held after school hours.7 This interpretation of the case is not supported by a reading of Bronx Household, as the hours were but one factor in the Second Circuit’s ultimate ruling on whether the school’s policy presented Establishment Clause problems. 331 F.3d at 356. In addition to the hours, the proposed meetings: (1) were “not endorsed by the School District”; (2) were “not attended by any school employee”; and (3) were “open to all members of the public.” Id.
While community meetings are held during library hours, Faith Center’s meeting would also be open to the public. In addition, (1) the County would not be endorsing the meeting (in fact, the flyer for Faith Center’s meeting specified that it would be the meeting’s sponsor); (2) all library patrons would be on the premises voluntarily (unlike children attending public school during school hours); (3) the meeting would be held in a closed room; and (4) patrons would be aware of the policy and the types of groups that have used the meeting room. Additionally, the County would be able to enforce reasonable time, place, and manner restrictions, applicable to all groups using the meeting room, in order to maintain the academic atmosphere of the remaining library space. See Widmar, 454 U.S. at 276, 102 S.Ct. 269. Faith Center only intended to use the Antioch Library meeting room one Saturday every other month for four hours. Certainly the County could place a reasonable restriction on the number of times any group may use the meeting room within a one or two month span, thus alleviating the County’s fear that the library meeting room will become a permanent house of worship.
The Supreme Court’s decisions in Good News Chib, Widmar, and Lamb’s Chapel, and the Second Circuit’s opinion in Bronx Household cannot meaningfully be distinguished from the facts presented in this case. Faith Center has demonstrated that the County’s enforcement of the policy is substantially likely to result in restricting speech based on viewpoint.
Ill
I do not question Contra Costa County’s sincere appreciation of one of our nation’s fundamental constitutional tenets — the separation of Church and State — or my colleagues’ adherence to this important principle. But the County has gone too far, and the court ignores the inherent constitutional flaws in the County’s argument. In the County’s attempt to walk the line between opening its doors to encourage its patrons to speak freely and closing its ears to religious doctrine, it has prevented its citizens from voluntarily hearing the “educational, cultural and community” views of an entire segment of the population in an accessible public space it opened for that very purpose.
Rather than adopting a policy of neutrality and placing reasonable time, place, and manner restrictions on every group that uses the library meeting rooms, the County has gone to great lengths to exclude a non-disruptive community group based on the views it wishes to express. The court fails in its analysis to adequately acknowl*1228edge the Establishment Clause entanglement problems this exclusion creates. Just as the government’s endorsement of one particular religion would run counter to the principles upon which this nation was founded, a County librarian’s attempt to define what constitutes religious worship and what does not also violates these principles. Squelching a viewpoint based solely on the non-obtrusive manner in which it is spoken impermissibly silences speech and exhibits a prejudice against religion that the First Amendment does not tolerate.
I see no abuse of discretion in the district court’s grant of a preliminary injunction requiring the County to allow Faith Center the same access to the Antioch Library’s meeting room that most other groups are allowed under the County’s broad, inclusive policy. I respectfully dissent.

. The policy at issue has twice been amended while tliis litigation was pending, Faith Center Church Evangelistic Ministries v. Glover, 2005 WL 1220947, at *1 (N.D.Cal. May 23, 2005), and, as modified by the Board of Supervisors of Contra Costa County, California, on December 14, 2004, now reads in relevant part:

Contra Costa County Library

Policy for the Use of Meeting Rooms in Libraries

It is the policy of the Contra Costa County Library to encourage the use of library meeting rooms for educational, cultural and community related meetings, programs, and activities.

RELIGIOUS USE

Library meeting rooms shall not be used for religious services.
*1217RESOLUTION NO.2004/655 (Contra Costa County Bd. of Supervisors).

. My colleagues point to one quote during the preliminary injunction hearing in which Faith Center seemingly agreed that its activities constitute "mere worship.”
The [cjourt: What is your bottom line? Is your bottom line then the [cjourt cannot issue any injunction which has the effect of precluding, as you would call it or the courts call it, mere worship in the library rooms?
[Counsel for Faith Center]: That’s right, your honor.
This agreement does not bind Faith Center's activities to the Supreme Court's concept of "mere religious worship, divorced from any teaching of moral values” as noted in Good News Club, 533 U.S. at 112 n. 4, 121 S.Ct. 2093. Not even the district court understood Faith Center’s agreement as comporting with Good News Club’s definition of "mere religious worship," as it correctly determined in its order granting the preliminary injunction that this case "presents a factual situation similar to the factual situations presented in the Good News Club, Lamb’s Chapel, Bronx Household of Faith, and Campbell cases,” which each held that the activities at issue were not religious worship devoid of discussion on otherwise permissible secular subjects. Faith Center Church, 2005 WL 1220947, at *7.

. Although Widmar and Good News Club address this issue in dicta, it is essential to note that there is no such extensive Supreme Court dicta for the proposition that religious worship may be parsed from other religious speech in the context of a private group conducting meetings in places otherwise open to the public under a broad policy such as this one. The caselaw suggests the Court is clearly moving away from that notion and towards the principle that religious worship in this context cannot be distinguished from other religious speech.

. The Board of Supervisors did not even try to define the term "religious services” in the policy it enacted by resolution. Instead, it provided, "[t]he County Librarian shall promulgate rules for the implementation of this policy.” RESOLUTION NO.2004/655. No such rules have ever been brought to our attention in this litigation and we must assume that their absence from the record is not an oversight by County counsel.

. I do not agree that the County opened a limited public forum, thus allowing content-based discrimination. This case is similar to Concerned Women for America, Inc. v. Lafayette County, 883 F.2d 32 (5th Cir.1989), in which the Fifth Circuit held that a library auditorium was a designated public forum when it was opened for organizations of a "civic, cultural or educational character,” yet excluded religious or political groups. Id. at 33-34. However, because I believe that the "Religious Use” exclusion constitutes viewpoint discrimination, which is forbidden in all forums, I decline to address this issue further.

. See supra § I n. 2.

. I note that the court's opinion does not address the County's Establishment Clause argument, but distinguishing Bronx Household from this case on the basis of the forum in each inevitably forces us to confront this issue.