Liberty Counsel seeks a permanent injunction against Oakland Unified School District. Photo courtesy of Liberty Counsel

 

OAKLAND, CA (MPG) – Liberty Counsel filed a reply brief on behalf of Child Evangelism Fellowship (CEF) NorCal East Bay against the Oakland Unified School District (OUSD) and its superintendent Dr. Kyla Johnson-Trammell for unlawfully denying elementary school Good News Clubs access to school facilities on an equal basis with other non-religious groups. According to the lawsuit, Child Evangelism Fellowship applied to use facilities on four different campuses within the Oakland Unified School District for more than two years, but were denied on religious grounds, pretextual schemes, and even by silence. These discriminatory denials violate the First and Fourteenth Amendments and California state law.

Liberty Counsel seeks a permanent injunction against Oakland Unified School District’s unconstitutional actions so the Good News Clubs can resume holding after-school activities on these public-school campuses. Notably, Liberty Counsel recently won a permanent injunction on behalf of Child Evangelism Fellowship against the Hawaii Department of Education for virtually the same type of unlawful conduct present in this case.

Prior to the COVID pandemic, Oakland Unified School District had allowed Child Evangelism Fellowship NorCal East Bay to host Good News Clubs on its campuses. In response to COVID, the school district cancelled all clubs in Spring 2020. However, when Child Evangelism Fellowship requested to resume the Good News Clubs throughout the Spring and Fall of 2023, elementary school officials responded with a variety of denials. In several of the denials, school officials overtly displayed religious viewpoint discrimination stating that Child Evangelism Fellowship was not a “good match,” and “we are not in support of Evangelism on our campus.” The district also denied Child Evangelism Fellowship NorCal East Bay because there was “no space” available even when spaces were listed as available online, and also failed to grant the organization’s “community partnership” application “due to its religious programming.”

While Oakland Unified School District does not contest this evidence in court documents, the district did attribute its unconstitutional and discriminatory treatment of Child Evangelism Fellowship to a “new policy” and “new practices” even though state and school district regulations reflect no such changes.

In the brief, Liberty Counsel asserted that Oakland Unified School District’s defense runs “dangerously close to perjury.”

“Simply put, [OUSD’s] litigation-driven affidavit is a sham. It is designed (but fails) to contradict the unrefuted documentary evidence before the Court that OUSD officials discriminated against Child Evangelism Fellowship on the basis of its religious viewpoint,” wrote Liberty Counsel. “[OUSD does] not contest, and therefore concedes, that [its] policies unconstitutionally treat Child Evangelism Fellowship differently than other similarly situated organizations in violation of the Free Exercise Clause and the Equal Protection Clause.”

To date, while other organizations such as Girls on the Run and Berkeley Chess School are allowed to use school facilities for after school programs, Child Evangelism Fellowship Good News Clubs remain excluded by blatant religious viewpoint discrimination.

Child Evangelism Fellowship NorCal East Bay is a non-profit organization and subsidiary of Child Evangelism Fellowship Inc., an international non-profit children’s ministry. Child Evangelism Fellowship Good News Clubs positively impact the lives of children and their families. Good News Clubs typically meet once per week, immediately after school, and are led by trained and vetted local community volunteers. The clubs provide religious and other teaching and activities to encourage learning, spiritual growth, and service to others, as well as social, emotional, character, and leadership development. Good News Clubs do not charge any fee and welcome children with written permission from parents.

In June 2001, the U.S. Supreme Court in Good News Club v. Milford Central School ruled that public schools violate the First Amendment by not providing equal access and equal treatment to Christian clubs when the school has opened the forum to secular clubs.

Liberty Counsel has represented approximately 200 Child Evangelism Fellowship cases nationally and has never lost a case involving Good News Clubs.

Liberty Counsel Founder and Chairman Mat Staver said, “The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that public schools cannot discriminate against Christian viewpoints regarding use of school facilities. Therefore, the Oakland Unified School District must give the Good News Clubs equal access and treatment as the similarly situated non-religious groups on public school campuses. 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 and that includes these Oakland schools.”