SAN FRANCISCO — Attorneys with the Alliance Defense Fund say they will appeal today’s decision by a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit that ruled against a Christian ministry barred from holding meetings in the community room of a public library.
“Christian community groups should not be treated any differently than other community groups,” said ADF Chief Counsel Benjamin Bull, who argued the case
Faith Center Church Evangelistic Ministries v. Glover before the 9th Circuit on behalf of the Christian ministry. “The panel of judges in this case unfortunately ruled in a way which allows libraries to unconstitutionally exclude certain members of the community from public meeting rooms based upon the content of their speech. ADF will aggressively pursue an appeal of this ruling.”
“In a supreme example of judicial activism, Judge Karlton has essentially rewritten the First Amendment by tossing religious expression out of its protections,” noted Bull, referring to a concurring opinion written by Judge Lawrence Karlton. Karlton wrote, “As the First Amendment notes, religious speech is categorically different than secular speech and is subject to analysis under the Establishment and Free Exercise Clause without regard to the jurisprudence of free speech.”
ADF attorneys represent Faith Center Church Evangelistic Ministries and its leader, Hattie Hopkins. Contra Costa County library officials in Antioch had barred Hopkins and her fellow Christians from continuing to meet in a publicly available room after the first meeting, citing their policy of disallowing any religious services on the premises.
“Once a library opens up a community room to the public, it is unconstitutional then for library officials to discriminate against patrons,” Bull explained. “Do we really want library officials to be the local free speech police, deciding when religious speech somehow becomes too religious? That’s what happened here.”
The U.S. Department of Justice filed a friend-of-the-court brief in support of the position of ADF attorneys. The DOJ agreed that the library’s policy banning religious groups from meeting in library community rooms is unconstitutional viewpoint discrimination (
www.telladf.org/news/story.aspx?cid=3611).
A copy of the 9th Circuit panel’s decision can be read at
www.telladf.org/UserDocs/FaithCenterOpinion.pdf.
ADF is a legal alliance defending the right to hear and speak the Truth through strategy, training, funding, and litigation.
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