School district: Alliance Defense Fund confused about anti-abortion student group
Thursday, April 14, 2011 at 11:23 am
- 9 Comments
The superintendent of a central Minnesota school district says a lawsuit against it by an anti-abortion legal group is a misunderstanding and that the litigation came out of the blue last Thursday. A representative of the Alliance Defense Fund, a national group that has sued numerous school districts, says the school should not be surprised by the lawsuit and claims it continues to violate students’ rights by not listing the All Life Is Valuable Club as “curricular.”
“The bottom line is, we have not denied access,” Dr. Jim Behle, St. Michael-Albertville School District Superintendent-elect, told St. Michael Patch. “The student group can meet in our school; basically, what the lawsuit wants us to do, we have already done. There’s a lot of misinformation being alleged.”
“Obviously [ADF] believed, and we’re kind of confused by this, that for some reason this group was going to be denied,” he said. “There’s obviously some confusion someplace by the national organization that filed this.”
But the ADF told the Minnesota Independent there’s is no confusion.
“There is no reason for the school district to be ‘surprised’ as it has been violating the club’s constitutional rights for several months now,” said ADF’s senior counsel David Cortman. “The district is currently taking the same position that they have throughout this entire process.”
ADF, which represents ALIV, says the group should be considered a “curricular” group and have all the same access the other educational student groups do, including meeting during school hours on school property. ADF says the group could be tied to health classes, for instance.
According to the lawsuit, ALIV’s curriculum involves “faith and religion, life, abortion, abstinence from premarital sex, personal responsibility, keeping and raising children in the event of pregnancy.”
“The school district still has the opportunity to immediately end this case by reversing its position and granting the pro-life club official recognition, just like that which is granted to the book club and the anime club, among others,” said ADF’s Cortman.
The ADF has been prolific in suing various educational institutions. In the last month alone, the group has been involved in actual or threatened legal action against at least six educational institutions.
In one instance, ADF threatened to file suit if the University of Buffalo’s student government organization didn’t recognize the group Students for Life. In a letter, ADF said the process was taking too long and threatened litigation if the situation wasn’t rectified. The university relented.
ADF won a case against a Chicago high school that asked a student who wore a “Be Happy, Not Gay” t-shirt to change the slogan to “Be Happy, Be Straight” or “The Truth Cannot Be Silenced,” which is a slogan of ADF’s anti-gay Day of Truth.
Last month, ADF filed a federal lawsuit after a New Hampshire zoning board denied an application by a man who wanted a blinking Jesus sign near the highway. The zoning board said the sign would distract drivers, but after the suit the body reversed its decision.
The legal group won a case in Arkansas that will allow a third grader to distribute Christian church pamphlets on school property during school hours, and in Pennsylvania ADF is suing a school district because it prevented a student from distributing church fliers during school hours.
A California school district backed down just hours after the ADF filed suit following the school’s decision that a student’s Christian talent routine would possibly violate the separation of church and state.
ADF boasts a budget of $32.7 million and was founded by a consortium of religious right entities including Campus Crusade for Christ, Focus on the Family and the American Family Association, which was recently listed as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center.
Lawsuits against schools are not the group’s only activities. In the month of March, the group was involved in legal action against a number of public and private entities, as well. ADF is suing an Arizona county on behalf of a church that had failed to file its property taxes or an exemption to avoid the taxes. The county is attempting to collect three years of backed taxes.
The ADF is also currently representing a woman who was fired as a counselor for the Centers for Disease Control after she told a gay client that the client’s lifestyle was contrary to her religious beliefs, and the group just lost a case in which a conservative Christian mother wanted to home-school her child over the objections of her ex-husband. A court ruled in favor of the father to send his daughter to public school.
The group is also suing an LGBT group called Bash Back! which protested a Michigan church. The church is suing for civil damages.
Closer to home, the group joined a suit in Wisconsin to overturn that state’s domestic partner registry for same-sex couples.
And in New York City, ADF is suing prevent an ordinance that requires anti-abortion clinics, called crisis pregnancy centers (CPCs), to include in their materials that they do not provide abortions or contraceptives. CPCs have a history of misleading women who have unintended pregnancy into their clinics by insinuating they provide a full range of options.
Follow Andy Birkey on Twitter9 Comments
Comment posted April 14, 2011 @ 12:00 pm
The Alliance Defense Fund: The biggest threat to education today.
Comment posted April 14, 2011 @ 1:12 pm
This is the biggest joke I have ever seen. Groups like this can say you can’t put into curriculum a anti bully program but you can teach christian religion in a course?
Comment posted April 14, 2011 @ 1:39 pm
Marie, the Alliance Defense Fund isn’t about protecting just anyone’s civil rights, but about protecting the rights of Christians who want to make America a Christian nation.
As long as Christian can lie, cheat, steal, and kill in the name of Christ, it’s all good.
Comment posted April 14, 2011 @ 1:54 pm
Wait a second. This group is suing tax payers. Where are Governors Walker and Scott to protest this as it will cost the states money?? Are we not in a fiscal crisis right now?
This group is stealing money from all of us. We as tax payers should be able to sue ADA to get our potholes filled.
Comment posted April 15, 2011 @ 8:12 am
The Big Gay Army is on the march with their Big Gay Agenda of wanting to be treated humanely and as equal citizens and to be left alone. Bar the doors!
Comment posted April 15, 2011 @ 9:38 pm
You have you facts wrong or at least conflated in several ways.
This is incorrect:
“ADF is suing an Arizona county on behalf of a church that had failed to file its property taxes or an exemption to avoid the taxes. The county is attempting to collect three years of backed taxes.”
The Church is suing the county – with ADF’s help. There is a large difference there. When the church prevails it will be because the court agrees with the merits of the case not that ADF was involved. So why is that wrong? Because you disagree with ADF?
Next the Church is not required by law to ASK for an exemption. It HAS it by law. The county failed to note that and published tax bills that are explicitly not permitted by the AZ state constitution. When the Church hired a lawyer the county administration agreed with the filing and retracted the billing for the current years without retracting the bills for the previous years WITH NO EXPLAINATION OR JUSTIFICATION.
Note the Church independently sought and received a finding from the State declaring that they are a not-for-profit that does not pay taxes. The finding explains that this is a preexisting fact that is binding on the counties in the state – not something that needs sought by the church.
There is a state law on the books that says that illegal taxation of non-profits are not allowed by subordinate governments – counties, cities, towns, etc. The law specifically states that a county tax collector has the authority to overturn illegal tax bills. The county ignored that fact.
Finally, the county then sold the lien for the KNOWN ILLEGAL back taxes to a private debt collector who then filed for foreclosure and a Sheriff’s sale. Not exactly an even handed means to collect a tax that the county knew to be illegal.
It appears you didn’t even read the article to which you linked. ADF is suing an Arizona county http://qtown.us/blog/2011/03/29/injunction-granted-for-isaiah-58-church-quartzsite/ It says that the taxes are illegal and the tax assessor did not follow proper procedure. You neglect to mention this.
All of this I think is because someone in the county decided that the church wasn’t “our kind of people.” If the church were an oppressed minority we would be seeing the ACLU and the grossly politicized Southern Poverty Law (hardly a group that a newspaper named “Independent” should ever be citing as authoritative) swooping down like bandits.
Much else you wrote here is layered with viewpoint bias. Why should a pregnancy support center that specifically does not offer abortion on principle have to post advertisements for abortion centers? Note that the Mayor when he signed the law said I know this is unconstitutional but I’m signing it anyway because I want to put support centers out of business. Why should a school prevent a child from inviting his classmates to a party at a church when any other manner of flyer announcing a similar non-religious event is allowed? It’s viewpoint bias and the ADF is doing its job. You can disagree and throw mud but it’s just showing how dirty you are.
Your writers are not presenting the facts in the AZ case and in general about ADF. Shame.
Comment posted April 20, 2011 @ 9:46 pm
I don’t have any problem with an EXTRA curricular group like this and apparently neither does the school but it’s hard for me to understand why they would think having their little group teach sectarian religious views would be appropriate during school hours. Associated with the “health class”? The health class hopefully teaches scientific facts about health, not “faith and religion”. It is totally inappropriate for government schools to be teaching “faith and religion” in any format whatsoever.
Comment posted April 25, 2011 @ 10:47 pm
crowepps,
What kind of religious views are “non-sectarian?” Why would they be preferable to “sectarian religious views?”
To answer your question “why would they think…?” when the other clubs at the school do already meet at the school under the exact same conditions that the ALIV club requests.
When does a voluntary club teaching decent values become “government schools … teaching ‘faith and religion’?”
Comment posted May 6, 2011 @ 1:43 pm
“When does a voluntary club teaching decent values become “government schools … teaching ‘faith and religion’?”
Answer: when the club is teaching Christian values using tax-payer funded public facilities. But you knew that. Or at least you would, if you took the time to actually do some legal research.
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