logo
Federal judge orders Oakland public schools to allow religious after-school clubs

Federal judge orders Oakland public schools to allow religious after-school clubs

A U.S. District Court judge has ordered the Oakland Unified School District to allow a Christian ministry to use public school buildings for after-school meetings.
The temporary order comes after the Child Evangelism Fellowship sued the Oakland school district in December, alleging schools opened campuses for secular organizations such as the Girl Scouts but in 2023 denied spaces to Good News Clubs, which had held weekly club meetings at a number of Oakland schools for a decade before pandemic shutdowns.
Lawyers from the conservative nonprofit Liberty Counsel representing the fellowship argued in their December lawsuit that the Oakland district, which has 45,000 students, is 'showing hostility towards the religious identity, speech, and viewpoint' of the organization and the district was violating a variety of its liberties including its free speech and equal protection rights.
'It is not clear how much of a dispute actually exists here,' U.S. District Judge Haywood S. Gilliam said. 'The Court finds that the law and facts clearly favor Plaintiff's position that OUSD violated CEF's free speech rights.'
The district 'appears' to argue its schools had no space to offer the fellowship, according to the court order. The district then appears to pivot its argument, suggesting that providing the fellowship with campus space would violate the Establishment Clause because the ministry's programming is from a Christian viewpoint.
Gilliam relied on Supreme Court precedent that rejected a similar argument.
Liberty Counsel is now seeking a permanent ruling, cementing their access to Oakland school campuses for its after school clubs, which it says provide students with religious and other teaching to encourage moral and character development, learning and spiritual growth.
'This is a great victory for Child Evangelism Fellowship, parents, and the students in Oakland public schools,' said Mat Staver, Liberty Counsel founder and chairman. 'The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that public schools cannot discriminate against Christian viewpoints regarding use of school facilities. Child Evangelism Fellowship gives children a biblically based education that includes moral and character development. Good News Clubs should be in every public elementary school.'
Orange background

Try Our AI Features

Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:

Comments

No comments yet...

Related Articles

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's embrace of unchristian Christian nationalism
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's embrace of unchristian Christian nationalism

Los Angeles Times

time8 hours ago

  • Los Angeles Times

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's embrace of unchristian Christian nationalism

Pete Hegseth, widely considered the least qualified Defense secretary in American history, is hardly anyone's version of the ideal Christian husband and father. Only 45 years old, he's been married three times. His first marriage — to his high school sweetheart — lasted a mere four years, deteriorating after Hegseth admitted to multiple extramarital affairs. A couple of years later, he married his second wife, with whom he had three children. During that marriage, he fathered a child with a Fox News producer who eventually became his third wife. He paid off a woman who accused him of sexual assault (he denies the assault). He routinely passed out drunk at family gatherings and misbehaved in public when inebriated, according to numerous witnesses. His own mother once accused him of being 'an abuser of women,' though she later retracted her claims when Hegseth was facing Senate confirmation. Still, the Senate's Republican majority, cowed by President Trump, confirmed his appointment. Hegseth has two qualities that Trump prizes above all others. He is blindly loyal to the president, and he looks good on TV. After his installation, Hegseth proceeded to fire top military brass who happened to be Black or women or both. He has restored the names of Confederate generals to Army bases (Bragg and Benning). His petty 'anti-woke' crusade led him to strip the name of the assassinated gay rights leader Harvey Milk, a former Naval officer who served honorably, from a Navy ship. And he has considered doing the same to a ship named in honor of the abolitionist and Civil War hero Harriet Tubman. He has said that women do not belong in combat roles, and has kicked out transgender soldiers, cruelly stripping them of the pensions they earned for their service. In March, he shared classified information about an impending American airstrike in Yemen on an unsecured Signal group chat that included his wife, on purpose, and the editor of the Atlantic, by accident. He is, in short, the least serious man ever to lead this nation's armed forces. As if all that weren't dispiriting enough, Hegseth is now in bed (metaphorically) with a crusading Christian nationalist. Earlier this month, Hegseth made waves when he reposted on social media a CNN interview with Douglas Wilson, the pastor and theocrat who is working hard to turn the clock back on the rights of every American who is not white, Christian and male. In the interview, Wilson expounded on his patriarchal, misogynistic, authoritarian and homophobic views. Women, he said, should serve as 'chief executive of the home' and should not have the right to vote. (Their men can do that for them.) Gay marriage and gay sex should be outlawed once again. 'We know that sodomy is worse than slavery by how God responds to it,' he told CNN's Pamela Brown. (Slavery is 'unbiblical,' he avowed, though he did bizarrely defend it once, writing in 1990 a pamphlet that 'slavery produced in the South a genuine affection between the races that we believe we can say has never existed in any nation before the War or since.') When a new outpost of his church opened in Washington, D.C ., in July, Hegseth and his family were among the worshippers. CNN described Hegseth's presence as 'a major achievement' for Wilson. 'All of Christ for All of Life,' wrote Hegseth as he endorsed and reposted the interview. That is the motto of Wilson's expanding universe, which includes his Christ Church in Moscow, Idaho, the center of his Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches, a network of more than 100 churches on four continents, parochial schools, a college, a publishing house and media platforms. 'All of Christ for All of Life' is a shorthand for the belief that Christian doctrines should shape every part of life — including government, culture and education. Wilson is a prolific author of books with titles such as 'Her Hand in Marriage,' 'Federal Husband,' and 'Reforming Marriage.' His book 'Fidelity' teaches 'what it means to be a one-woman man.' Doubtful it has crossed Hegseth's desk. 'God hates divorce,' writes Wilson in one of his books. Given the way sexual pleasure is celebrated in the Old and New Testaments, Wilson has a peculiarly dim view of sex. I mean, how many weddings have been graced with recitations from the Song of Solomon, with its thinly disguised allusions to pleasurable sexual intimacy? ('Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth! For your love is better than wine.') Wilson's world is considerably less sensual. 'A man penetrates, conquers, colonizes, plants,' he writes in 'Fidelity.' 'A woman receives, surrenders, accepts.' Mutual sexual pleasure seems out of the question: 'The sexual act cannot be made into an egalitarian pleasuring party.' Ugh. There is nothing particularly new here; Wilson's ideology is just another version of patriarchal figures using religion to fight back against the equality movements of the late 19th and 20th centuries. They are basically the hatemongers of the Westboro Baptist Church dressed up in respectable clothing. 'Some people may conflate Christian nationalism and Christianity because they both use the symbols and language of Christianity, such as a Bible, a cross and worship songs,' says the group Christians Against Christian Nationalism on its website. 'But Christian nationalism uses the veneer of Christianity to advance its own aims — to point to a political figure, party or ideology instead of Jesus.' What you have in people like Hegseth and Wilson are authoritarian men who hide behind their religion to execute the most unchristian of agendas. God may hate divorce, but from my reading of the Bible, God hates hypocrisy even more. Bluesky: @rabcarianThreads: @rabcarian

Same-sex marriage is no threat to religious liberty
Same-sex marriage is no threat to religious liberty

Boston Globe

time11 hours ago

  • Boston Globe

Same-sex marriage is no threat to religious liberty

This is the ridiculous accusation being made by Kim Davis, a former Kentucky county clerk. In 2015, she was briefly jailed for contempt of court after she refused to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples as required by law. Get The Gavel A weekly SCOTUS explainer newsletter by columnist Kimberly Atkins Stohr. Enter Email Sign Up She is asking the Supreme Court, with a more staunchly conservative bench than the one that codified same-sex marriage, to rule that federally recognized unions between two men or two women threaten 'her sincerely held religious beliefs on marriage,' according to her lawyers. Advertisement Davis's challenge to Obergefell stems from her appeal of a $100,000 jury verdict plus $260,000 for attorney fees that she was ordered to pay to the gay couple to whom she denied a marriage license. The nine justices have not yet decided whether to review Davis's appeal. Davis is being represented by the Liberty Counsel, a conservative legal group that specializes in religious liberty cases. In 2018, the group won a 7-2 Supreme Court decision that ruled in favor of a Advertisement In a statement, Mat Staver, the Liberty Counsel's founder and chairman, said the Davis case 'underscores why the U.S. Supreme Court should overturn the wrongly decided Obergefell v. Hodges opinion because it threatens the religious liberty of Americans who believe that marriage is a sacred union between one man and one woman.' Davis herself has entered that sacred union four times with three men. For last year's 20th anniversary of the Goodridge decision that legalized same-sex marriage in Massachusetts, After the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, Justice Clarence Thomas ticked off a list of other After Roe was outlawed, 'I remember thinking 'Oh my God, is it possible that all of the rights and privileges that we've won as a community, whether it's women's or LGBTQ rights, will be washed away in the same lifetime in which we won them?'' Julie Goodridge, one of the plaintiffs in the Massachusetts case, told me. There's Advertisement But we're also witnessing the most tumultuous era in modern politics, when things we once believed impossible have now become as commonplace as they are alarming. The end of Roe proved that our civil rights are not sacrosanct. Opponents of reproductive rights chipped away at abortion access for decades until the political climate was primed to erase what had been considered settled law for nearly 50 years. So far, Trump hasn't mentioned Davis's appeal. That could change if the Supreme Court adds her case to its upcoming docket, but perhaps this White House may already be quietly tipping its hand. In 2022, Joe Biden signed into law the Respect for Marriage Act, which requires all states to recognize same-sex marriages performed elsewhere. But on the official White House website, instead of remarks from Biden officials about protecting same-sex marriage, there's now only a Here's hoping that a year from now, my friends, and every LGBTQ couple, will still have weddings and anniversaries to celebrate. Renée Graham is a Globe columnist. She can be reached at

Trump-inspired showmen are running this California county. Will it work on the state stage?
Trump-inspired showmen are running this California county. Will it work on the state stage?

Politico

timea day ago

  • Politico

Trump-inspired showmen are running this California county. Will it work on the state stage?

Bianco is a vocal supporter of Trump who regularly mirrors the president's rhetoric as he lays into Democrats on crime, immigration, high taxes and affordability. In the past, he said he would not enforce state vaccine mandates, promised to end sanctuary laws, and was once a dues paying member of the Oath Keepers, an extremist militia. When he endorsed Trump in 2024, he released a tongue-in-cheek video proclaiming 'It's time we put a felon in the White House. Trump 2024, baby.' Shaw, meanwhile, led a successful effort in 2023 to bar teachers from displaying the Pride flag at Chino Valley Unified schools. That same year, she promoted a local policy requiring schools to inform parents if their child might be transgender, prompting the state to quickly sue the school district (last year, a court permanently blocked the policy). A Los Angeles Times profile of Shaw observed that depending on who you ask, she is a 'righteous mother' or 'a small-town bigot, basking in the celebrity she's attained as a mouthpiece for Christian evangelicals.' 'I think they're coming out fighting and swinging because people want to see results,' Ingram said. 'I don't know there is a center anymore when it comes to politics.' For Democrats, that's a major problem. The party had expanded its ranks in the county by promoting a more moderate brand of center-left politics. But cost of living and other economic concerns are especially pronounced here. Longer commutes and lower wages mean economic issues resonate. Many residents who drive to Los Angeles for work spend hours each day on the highway to avoid paying for the toll road. Traffic grows worse by the year. And while the county's ever-more diverse suburbs had propelled Democrats to past victories, Bianco, Essayli, and Shaw's wins in the half-decade leading up to 2024 were precursors to an election in which Republicans were able to capitalize on lower turnout and peel off voters who trusted the GOP more on core issues like public safety and the economy, said Democratic political consultant Derek Humphrey. That migration, in swing states, was vital in delivering Trump the presidency and could reshape politics around the country — if it persists. 'There's certainly concern,' Humphrey said. 'The big question is: Was this a temporary shift? Or was it part of a long-term trend?' In Norco, the traditional values of the Old West are (literally) embedded into the structure of the 25,000-person town. Gravel horse trails, groomed near-daily by city maintenance workers, lead to the piled haystacks at Tony's Hay and Grain beside Norco's Christian Community Church. On Corona Street, a series of corrals line the block, the mares inside watched over by an ironwork silhouette of two riders heading for a desert cross. New construction, by law, is required to look 'Western' — a regulation taken so literally that the City Council once rejected the domed architecture of a planned Hindu temple for not fitting a 'western aesthetic.'

DOWNLOAD THE APP

Get Started Now: Download the App

Ready to dive into a world of global content with local flavor? Download Daily8 app today from your preferred app store and start exploring.
app-storeplay-store