The club met at the Fourniers’ Milford Center Community Bible Church, just up the highway from Milford’s one traffic light and one bank. The town’s only school, Milford Central, even transported kids to the weekly gathering. Then, in 1996, there was a problem with the bus, and the Fourniers decided to move meetings to the school. When the superintendent told them no way, the couple was shocked. Clubs like 4-H and the Girl Scouts used the building after hours, they argued, so why couldn’t they? “They discriminated against us just because we’re religious,” says Rev. Fournier. “That seems unconstitutional.”
The Supreme Court will decide if Rev. Fournier is right. The Good News Club v. Milford Central School, which the court will hear this week, is the latest in a series of cases in recent years involving equal access and the wall of separation between church and state. Last year, the court decided that student-led prayer at football games violated the constitution. But in a pivotal 1990 decision, the justices said that high schools could not bar student religious groups from meeting on campus if other clubs were allowed. The rulings underscore the tricky distinction between protected religious speech and unlawful endorsement of that speech by public institutions. New programs like the Bush administration’s initiative to fund faith-based social-service organizations could blur the lines even further. Now, the fate of the Fourniers’ club could affect hundreds of church groups nationwide and pose new dilemmas for public schools in determining how much exposure to religion is too much.
The Good News Club case gives the court a chance to clear up considerable confusion over the issue. In 1993, the justices ruled unanimously that a Long Island school district could not prohibit the Lamb’s Chapel church from using a public school to show a Christian film series on parenting, saying that banning the group amounted to “viewpoint discrimination.” Since then, lower courts have disagreed on how to interpret the ruling. In a case involving another Good News Club in Missouri, the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the basic aim of the club-teaching children values-was little different from that of groups like the Boy Scouts. But the Second Circuit in New York, which reviewed the Fourniers’ case, sided with the school, calling the activities of the Good News Club “quintessentially religious,” and therefore prohibited.
The Milford case poses a tough question: Does the mere presence of religious activity in public schools create a dangerous church-state entanglement? In the Lamb’s Chapel case, the church sought to use the school on evenings and weekends for adults. The Fourniers’ group meets during the week at 3 p.m. (the school day ends at 2:56 p.m.) for kids ages 6-12. Club members pray, sing Christian songs, recite scripture and work from a curriculum designed by the Child Evangelism Fellowship, an international ministry that supports more than 4,000 Good News Clubs nationwide. “It’s Sunday school on Tuesday,” says Milford school superintendent Peter Livshin. “We can’t have that in the school.”
The Fourniers say they are not forcing religion on the children of Milford. The club meets right after school, they contend, because that is the most convenient time. And students must have parental consent to participate. More important, their attorneys will argue before the court, the school’s building-use policy allows for “education” and “uses pertaining to the welfare of the community.” That open-door policy, they say, cannot expressly exclude religion. “The school leaders are setting themselves up as theologians, determining which activities are too religious. That sets a dangerous precedent,” says John Whitehead, president of the Rutherford Institute, a civil liberties group that is representing the Fourniers. Opponents say the free-expression argument is a ruse. “This isn’t about free speech for the children,” says Julie Underwood, general counsel for the National School Boards Association. “This is about whether the school should provide an audience for the reverend by giving him direct access to the kids.”
In Milford, folks are downplaying the controversy. The Fourniers’ three daughters (one of whom is named in the suit) all go to Milford Central.
Mrs. Fournier volunteers for the school’s reading program. The reverend and Superintendent Livshin sit together at school basketball games. But try as they might, they can’t ignore the far-reaching implications of the case. More than 500 of the Good News Clubs around the country currently meet in public schools. Rev. Fournier has been deluged with calls from anxious religious leaders who are worried that their fates are linked to his. The school, too, is contemplating its future. If the court rules that Milford’s open-forum policy must extend to the Good News Club, says Livshin, the school will close the building to all outside groups. Either way, says Rev. Fournier, life in the sleepy town of Milford will go on. “It’s a great school, and these are good people,” he says. “We all want what’s best for the children.” Now both sides must wait to see if their view of what is best is also what is constitutional.
