I’m with Doug on this: It’s hard for the school to honestly disclaim endorsement and preferential treatment when it deliberately invites a member of the clergy, precisely because he is a member of the clergy. It’s much easier to make clear to people that there is no endorsement or preferential treatment when the school says, honestly, that this is a public access program that all groups can equally access, and that the church isn’t being given any special access because it’s a church or because the school endorses its message.
Indeed, I take it that if a school opens up its facilities for nonworship programs, it would still want to make clear to people that it isn’t endorsing that group, whether the group is the Sierra Club or the Young Americans for Freedom or whoever else – or for that matter a religious group that isn’t engaged in worship services. Presumably the school thinks, and I think correctly so, that it will be easy enough to make this clear. It shouldn’t be any harder for worship services. Finally, if the concern is that students might view endorsement from the fact that the school is open that way every Sunday, nothing stops the school from limiting the number of times one group can use the school each year. And if the school thinks that this isn’t necessary, because it can let (say) the NRA use the school each Sunday without people thinking that the school endorses the NRA – presumably because that’s either already clear or could be made clear – then I think the school can equally let the church use the school each Sunday (with the proper disclaimers) without fear of undue confusion on the public’s part. Eugene From: religionlaw-boun...@lists.ucla.edu [mailto:religionlaw-boun...@lists.ucla.edu] On Behalf Of hamilto...@aol.com Sent: Monday, August 15, 2011 10:18 AM To: religionlaw@lists.ucla.edu Subject: Re: Establishment Clause, equal access, and confusion The 2d Cir does not disagree with the equal access point, but rather says that the School Dist is prohibiting an activity, not expression per se. In fact, prayer, religious instruction, expression of devotion to God, and the singing of hymns are not prohibited. What is excluded is full-scale worship services with all that entails. Worship services are not "student groups", but rather collections of adults and children. If a student group engaging in proselytizing activities a la Rosenberger were the equivalent of a worship service, Eugene might be correct. The 2d Cir. is saying that there is no such equivalence here. On the confusion point, I would think that you are more likely to have confusion about government endorsement when a school is transformed into a church for a full day each week than when you have a short prayer announced at graduation. Yet, the latter is unconstitutional under Lee v. Weisman. The disclaimer proposal is insufficient to forestall children and everyone else, actually, from thinking that P.S. 151 is in fact Evangelical, or Buddhist, or whatever, when it is the worship home for a congregation. I don't know if you have noticed, but it is a fact that politicians routinely favor their own religion, so it is perfectly reasonable to conclude that a school board opening the door to a particular religious group for their most important religious activity, worship, is an endorsement of that religious group. And the school board's rejection of a particular religious group's application, even if based on neutral principles, also would raise serious questions about endorsement. Thus, the prohibition is necessary to avoid an Establishment Clause violation. Marci In a message dated 8/15/2011 12:40:58 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time, vol...@law.ucla.edu writes: But this possibility that a few people might be confused, even when the government makes clear that all it’s offering is equal access – just like the equal access offered to religious groups in many contexts, such as tax exemptions, the use of GI Bill grants, and so on – doesn’t strike me as reason enough to reject equal access.
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