Protecting Religious Freedom

The so-called equal access law enacted by Congress last year was expected to clarify the issue of religion on campus. It seems to have done anything but, considering the heated hearings it has caused in at least two Orange County school districts and the difference in the approaches that various districts are taking.

For instance, the Anaheim Union High School District voted Aug. 8 to open school facilities to religious groups and other non-curriculum-related clubs and organizations. It was the third vote on the controversial issue. Last January, the district voted to open facilities to all groups, but it reversed itself last March when confronted with legal questions and other reservations.

In January, the Saddleback Valley Unified School District refused to change its policy banning religious clubs from using campus facilities during the school day. In May, a suit was filed against the district seeking to advertise meetings of lunch-hour religious discussion groups.

And last December, the Capistrano Valley Unified School District voted against allowing religious clubs on campus after months of study and stormy sessions in which the board was threatened with legal action whether it allowed the religious clubs to meet or banned them.

Earlier in the year, the Newport-Mesa Unified School District, without controversy, decided to allow religious clubs to meet on campus.

Most other high school districts, however, have not taken action on the issue nor applied the federal law that basically allows high school students to hold religious meetings in school facilities as long as other non-academic groups such as chess clubs or “pep” clubs also are allowed to do so. But it’s not that simple. The law’s language is ambiguous and raises many technical questions.

It also raises the basic constitutional question of whether the meeting of religious groups on campus, at any time, violates the fundamental constitutional concept of separation of church and state. We think that Congress failed to uphold that principle in passing the equal access law, which is now putting local school boards under strong pressure from some religious groups seeking to use school facilities. That’s wrong. School districts, however, can’t ignore the law, and some are finding themselves in the uncomfortable position of having to ban all clubs when they believe that religious clubs shouldn’t have access to school facilities.

And districts that do vote to keep religious clubs off-campus do not deserve to be charged with pursuing an anti-religious policy. Rather than persecuting religion, they are protecting it from government intrusion and control of any sort, which is precisely what those who drafted the Constitution had in mind when they wrote the establishment clause into the First Amendment. That clause guarantees freedom of religion, which means strict government neutrality without any form of intrusion--for or against.

But the U.S. Supreme Court has yet to specifically address the issue of whether students at a public high school have the constitutional right to hold student-initiated religious meetings. It may do so this fall when it is scheduled to consider a case involving a Pennsylvania school district. It is an issue that needs the high court’s clarification.

That doctrine of strict separation of church and state that relies on the home and church, not public schoolrooms, for practice of religion has been consistently upheld in state and federal court decisions that have found the use of school facilities by religious groups unconstitutional. It’s time the Supreme Court ruled that way too, to end the confusion and controversy Congress has caused with its misguided equal access legislation.