Good News Clubs is the name of a well-known and long-established Supreme Court precedent that says schools cannot restrict clubs’ access to their facilities because of the content of material used.
But there are some schools that apparently still haven’t figured it out.
Because Liberty Counsel, which fought the first case to the Supreme Court and won, and has never since lost a case involving that precedent, is back in court.
Officials with the organization say they have sued on behalf of Child Evangelism Fellowship of Hawaii. The defendants are the state education department and superintendents in multiple districts.
They are accused of being in violation of First and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution, state laws, and school policies “by discriminating against and blocking CEF from hosting its elementary school Good News Clubs in certain district facilities that are open to other, similarly situated non-religious organizations.” Liberty Counsel reported.
The international clubs “positively impact the lives of children and their families. Good News Clubs typically meet once per week, immediately after school, and are led by trained and vetted local community volunteers. The clubs provide religious and other teaching and activities to encourage learning, spiritual growth, and service to others, as well as social, emotional, character, and leadership development,” the legal team explained.
There are nearly 3,100 such clubs meeting in schools now, including some in other Hawaii locations.
The newest front in the battle for religious freedom developed because such clubs were closed down during COVID. But after COVID, when secular clubs were being allowed to resume, Good News Clubs remained banned.
CEF had asked for permission for clubs in in Nu’uanu Elementary, Lincoln Elementary, Waimea Elementary, Kalihi Waena Elementary, Kohala Elementary School, and Pearl City Elementary.
But state education bureaucrats denied every request even while allowing secular clubs to resume activities, Liberty Counsel said.
School officials blatantly told club organizers they could not meet because they are “religious.” Sometimes they claimed there already were too many clubs, and others simply said they didn’t like them.
A few times, the bureaucrats tasked with and paid for operating the schools properly didn’t even bother to respond.
Liberty Counsel Founder and Chairman Mat Staver explained the Supreme Court’s decision means schools “cannot discriminate against Christian viewpoints regarding use of school facilities. Child Evangelism Fellowship gives children a biblically based education that includes moral and character development. Good News Clubs should be in every public elementary school and that includes in these Hawaii schools.”
That ruling dates to June 2001 and involved a Good News Club and the Milford Central School District. It said public schools violate the Constitution by not providing equal access and treatment to Christian clubs.
IMPORTANT NOTE TO WND READERS: For America’s ruling elites, nothing is more precious, wonderful and life-giving to their great cause than the Jan. 6, 2021 “insurrection” at the U.S. Capitol. It’s irrelevant that the events didn’t come remotely close to constituting an actual “insurrection,” or that both police and over 200 undercover FBI assets provoked the riot – which Tucker Carlson calls a “set-up.” Yet Vice President Kamala Harris still insists the minor riot was just as horrific as the 9/11 terror attacks and Japanese surprise attack on Pearl Harbor.
WHY are the elites doing this?
It’s not just because convicting, imprisoning, torturing and destroying the lives of hundreds of Trump supporters is meant to terrify and intimidate millions of Americans into submission. And it’s not just because activist judges and bureaucrats in over 30 states are absurdly trying to keep Trump off their state’s election ballots by citing the 14th Amendment’s prohibition against anyone who “engaged in insurrection” from holding elective office.
It’s because the elites’ destruction of America is so rapid, horrendous and obvious that they feel compelled to turn their opponents into monsters – or lose power at the next election. But that doesn’t mean just calling conservatives and Christians “racists,” “white supremacists,” “radical extremists” and “domestic terrorists” as they do continually. They know much more is needed.
Question: What if, far from being horrified by a half-baked riot they absurdly claim is worse than any domestic disturbance since the Civil War, the left actually LOVES the idea of violence on the right – the worse the better – since it perfectly serves their agenda? Increasingly, all the evidence strongly suggests today’s power-mad leftist elites not only intend to intimidate and discredit their political opponents by calling them terrorists, they mean to provoke actual violence.
The secret strategies and shocking tactics of today’s ascendant far-left elites are exposed as perhaps never before in the January issue of WND’s critically acclaimed monthly Whistleblower magazine, headlined “INCITING VIOLENCE: DEMS’ SECRET STRATEGY FOR STAYING IN POWER.”
WHISTLEBLOWER is available in both the popular print edition and a state-of-the-art digital version, either single issues or discounted annual subscriptions.
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