PORTLAND, Ore. (ABP) — A federal appeals court said Aug. 24 that a Washington state high school is not required to charter a Bible club, since the club allows only Christians to be full members.
In Truth v. Kent Public School District, a unanimous three-judge panel of the Oregon-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said Kentridge High School in Kent, Wash., does not have to offer official recognition to the Truth Bible Club.
The decision stems from a 2003 lawsuit filed on behalf of two then-students at Kentridge by the conservative Christian legal group Alliance Defense Fund. The students sued after the district refused to charter the Truth club because the club intended to limit full membership to Christians who have professed a “belief in the Bible and in Jesus Christ.”
District officials said limiting membership in a club based on religion violated the district's anti-discrimination policy. Attorneys for the students, meanwhile, contended that other student clubs the school had already recognized — such as a gay-straight alliance — limited membership on the basis of ideology. Therefore, they said, refusing to recognize Truth violated the students' religious freedom under the First Amendment as well as a law that assures religious groups have access equal to that of other organizations in public schools.
But a federal district court agreed with the school district, and the appeals panel upheld that ruling. In an opinion written by Judge Clifford Wallace, the court noted that Truth could still meet on school property even though not officially recognized and that other Christian groups had gained recognition without requiring that their members be Christians.
“On their face, the district's non-discrimination policies do not preclude or discriminate
against religious speech. Indeed, there are two other Bible clubs at Kentridge that have received [official] recognition and do not share Truth's general membership restrictions,” Wallace wrote. “Truth also has not shown that the district justifies its nondiscrimination policies with reference to the content of a message Truth's discriminatory conduct may attempt to convey. The policies are content-neutral.”
ADF attorneys vowed to appeal the ruling. “Public high school officials cannot treat Christian students on campus as second-class citizens,” said ADF Legal Counsel Tim Chandler, in a press release. “The school district's so-called ‘non-discrimination' policy is supposed to prevent discrimination on campus. Instead, the school officials are using the policy to discriminate against the Truth Bible Club, which simply wanted the same access as other groups at Kentridge High.”
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9th Circuit's opinion in Truth v. Kent Public School District