6.19.2007

OFF TO THE SUPREMES AGAIN:
ADF Attorneys Ask U.S. Supreme Court to Review "Faith Center" Case...

click here to enlarge photo ADF Senior Counsel Jordan Lorence, Chief Counsel Benjamin Bull and ADF client Hattie Hopkins. Copyright 2007 ADF.

Hattie Hopkins leads the Faith Center Church Evangelical Ministry in Sacramento, California.

But when Hattie and her ministry rented a room in a local library in Antioch, California, a city named ironically after one of the first Christian churches, she was told that she was not welcome.

Why? Because the Contra Costa Library System had instituted a policy that barred religious groups from using meeting rooms for "religious services." And Hattie's ministry had the audacity to want to worship and pray in the meeting room!

ADF attorneys went to bat for Hattie and won at U.S. District Court (see ADF News Alert, 6/1/05) for her constitutional right to rent the meeting room on the same terms as all other groups. But the library system appealed to the infamous U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit – a court often hostile to religious liberty. The U.S. Justice Department supported Hattie, but the court ruled against her.

Now, ADF attorneys have filed a petition at the U.S. Supreme Court, asking the nation's highest court to review the case.

"Religious expression is not second-class speech," says ADF chief counsel Benjamin Bull. "Nothing in the Constitution requires the government to single out religious groups and censor their expression because their meetings have religious content.

Ben continues: "This is a potentially nation shaping case because it can strongly reaffirm the constitutional right to religious expression and equal access."

A copy of the petition for writ of certiorari filed at the U.S. Supreme Court in the case Faith Center v. Glover can be read at www.telladf.org/UserDocs/FaithCenterPetition.pdf.

Please be in prayer for this case – which could establish another important legal precedent in the ongoing battle to secure equal access for ministries to public facilities. Thank you!

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