Illinois school district lifts restrictions on Good News Clubs, pays over $105K in legal fees
An Illinois school district has agreed to lift restrictions on Christian student groups known as Good News Clubs and pay more than $100,000 in legal fees and damages as part of a settlement.
Under a settlement entered in federal district court Wednesday, the school district agreed to lift certain restrictions on the Christian clubs and pay $105,351.25 in attorney fees, costs and damages.
Child Evangelism Fellowship (CEF), which oversees Good News Clubs hosted at schools nationwide, sued the Moline-Coal Valley School District in February, alleging the school district imposed restrictions on its clubs that other similarly situated clubs weren't subject to.
As part of the court-enforced agreement between the two sides, school officials will amend their policies to give Good News Clubs the same access to facilities as comparable nonreligious groups, such as the Boy Scouts and Girls on the Run, which were given a different classification under the district's policies.
Mat Staver, founder and chairman of Liberty Counsel, which represented CEF, said in a statement that the outcome was a “great victory for Child Evangelism Fellowship, parents, and students in the Moline-Coal Valley School District.”
“This is a reasonable judgment,” Staver said. “The First Amendment prohibits public schools from discriminating against Christian viewpoints regarding use of school facilities.”
“Child Evangelism Fellowship gives children a biblically based education that includes moral and character development,” he added. “Good News Clubs should be in every public elementary school and that includes these Moline schools.”
The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of Illinois, Rock Island Division, alleged that the district required CEF to “pay discriminatory facility use fees” and sought to “prevent them from distributing literature to students to take home to their parents, and bar them from Backpack Nights.”
“Defendants have unconstitutionally relegated CEF to constitutional orphan status and discriminatory treatment in all forums available for similarly situated organizations in violation of the First and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution,” the complaint states.
“Defendants’ sole justification for treating CEF less favorably than other similarly situated nonreligious organizations is one thing: CEF’s religious viewpoint. That is unconstitutional and unlawful.”
In 2001, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 6-3 in Good News Club v. Milford Central School that public schools cannot ban the Christian student group from their property after class hours solely because the club is religious.
