LOUISVILLE, Ky. — After a 10-year legal battle, a federal judge has dismissed an American Civil Liberties Union lawsuit against a home providing social services for at-risk children. The lawsuit claimed the home, Sunrise Children’s Services, should not receive partial expense reimbursements from the government for its needy youth programs because of the home’s religious affiliation. The Alliance Defense Fund provided funding for attorneys with the Christian Legal Society and Thomas More Law Center to defend the home in the suit.
“Faith-based organizations should not be discriminated against for their beliefs. The reimbursement Sunrise receives has never been used for religious indoctrination. It has always been used for social services that help needy kids, and we are pleased the court has dismissed this needless lawsuit. This is an important victory for faith-based social service providers,” said Tim Tracey, litigation counsel for CLS’s Center for Law & Religious Freedom.
“Sunrise Children’s Services has the same right to receive reimbursement to provide help to the children of Kentucky as any other social services provider,” said Pat Gillen, another attorney who worked on the case and now serves as a visiting professor of law at Ave Maria School of Law. “The ACLU and its allies fought long and hard to take away that right, but the court didn’t let that happen.”
The suit began when the children’s home, formerly known as Kentucky Baptist Homes for Children, dismissed Alicia Pedreira, an employee who was involved in homosexual behavior. The Kentucky ACLU attempted to characterize Pedreira’s dismissal as religious discrimination and challenged the state and federal reimbursement the home receives, claiming its religious affiliation made the reimbursement a violation of the Constitution’s Establishment Clause. The court rejected the religious discrimination claim in 2001 and ruled Monday that the plaintiffs do not have standing to challenge the reimbursements.
The March 31 ruling from the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Kentucky, Louisville Division, in
Pedreira v. Kentucky Baptist Homes for Children is available at
www.telladf.org/UserDocs/KBHCruling.pdf. John Sheller of the Louisville law firm Stoll, Keenon & Ogden is lead counsel for the home.
ADF is a legal alliance defending the right to hear and speak the Truth. The CLS Center for Law & Religious Freedom is a team of Christian attorneys allied with ADF to defend religious liberty and human life.
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