Image: Ben McLeod

Image: Ben McLeod

Under pressure from the religious-right legal outfit Alliance Defense Fund (ADF), the city of Elk River removed an ordinance that banned religious groups from holding worship services in the city’s library. The council voted on Aug. 17 to remove the restriction.

City council member Paul Motin told the council in July that the reason for the restriction was to prevent the library from being used as a church.

“We didn’t want them to turn them into worship halls. Even though they could use it [for meetings] they couldn’t use it for prayer and worship services,” he said. “If they need them for meetings and things along those lines, I have no problems with that.”

“I guess I would have a problem if we started allowing the city facilities to be used for church services. There are other places available to them in the city,” Motin said.

Mayor Stephanie Klinzing said it was overuse that led the council to put the policy into place. “We have many start-up churches using public and private facilities in the city that occupy the same space every week for, sometimes, many years,” she said. “The council wanted to prevent this type of long-term, continual use by one group in order to open the spaces up to use by as many community groups and residents as possible.”

The city also had an ordinance that charged a higher fee to religious groups using a city park for worship services that was changed at the August meeting.

The policy stated: “The meeting room is available; free of charge, for use by community members for non-religious, non-commercial meetings, which are open to the public” and “usage may not be for prayer or other worship purposes.” The policy had been in effect for more than six years, according to Klinzing, and charged religious groups to use library meeting rooms for worship services. The library board passed a similar policy a year ago prohibiting religious use of it’s meeting rooms.

When the council repealed the ordinance Aug. 17, the library board followed suit and changed their policy to allow religious groups to use its rooms for worship.

“Excluding religious groups from a public library and charging them more than other non-profits to utilize a public park for religious expression is unconstitutional,” said Daniel Blomberg, an attorney for ADF, the group who made the complaint to the city, in a press release praising the decision. “We appreciate the city’s decision to respect the First Amendment rights of its citizens.”

But the legal issues surrounding the use of public facilities for worship services are murky.

In 2006, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that a northern California county was within its rights to ban worship services from its public libraries. “[T]he County’s decision to exclude . . . religious worship services from the meeting room is reasonable in light of the library policy so that the . . . [library] is not transformed into an occasional house of worship,” the court wrote.

Religious groups can hold meetings, the court ruled, but when a religious group is turning public property into a regular church service, that constitutes government endorsement of religion.

The court said: “To conclude that the County’s exclusion of religious worship services from its government buildings is unreasonable would result in the ‘remarkable proposition that any public [building] opened for civic meetings must be opened for use as a church, synagogue, or mosque.’”

Klinzing disagreed with the the policy when it was implemented. “I was fully aware at the time that the city council approved the policy that it was blatantly unconstitutional,” she said. Klinzing says she went to the city attorney to get his opinion. “Our attorney would not render his opinion that there was anything illegal about the proposed policy,” she said.

“Regardless, I knew that some day it would be challenged and the city would have to — or be forced to — change the policy. And, as you know, that is exactly what has happened,” she said.

Klinzing said that the city council came up with a compromise that works for everyone — restrict the number of times an entity can rent a facility each year, but not prohibit any type of entity from renting it. “The change in the policy was very simply accomplished and the new language protects the facilities from the sole major concern of long-term, continual use by one organization without putting the city in violation of the U.S. Constitution,” she said.

Elk River’s public library has been used by Mayor Klinzing and others for a religious worship called “Pray Elk River.” According to press reports, as part of an effort to bring the “Kingdom of God” to the city, the mayor, pastors and local business leaders met every Tuesday for years at the Elk River Library to worship and pray. The primary goal was “for every person in the greater Elk River area to be prayed for by name.”

”We have a group of intercessors who pray for the town council, for the city, for me as mayor,” Klinzing told The New York Times in 2004.

But that group met in the old Elk River Library, which wasn’t covered under the city policy prohibiting worship. The group had to move to a different location in 2007, however, when the library moved into its new facility.

“The weekly use of a room in the former library by the Pray Elk River group was not a violation of the library’s policy because the policy covering the former library did not prohibit prayer and worship,” said Klinzing. “The group was not able to use the new library, however, because the new policy restricted prayer and worship.”