Freedom From Religion Foundation Overruled By Federal Judge

Charlie Butts - OneNewsNow - 4/14/2011 3:30:00 AM
A federal judge has upheld the constitutionality of a policy that allows public school students in Spartanburg, South Carolina, to go to an off-campus facility for religious training.

Public schools have historically allowed release time for a religious education course offered at a church nearby. But that has recently not been the case.

"Sometimes these release time programs have been challenged under the idea that somehow this establishes a religion," explains Mat Staver, head of Liberty Counsel. "This judge's decision is correct in allowing the release time program in the Spartanburg School District because it is clearly consistent with the Constitution and in no way establishes a religion."

The Freedom From Religion Foundation, which filed the lawsuit, did not understand that the course is strictly voluntary, explains Staver. The judge, however, deemed the policy a "passive" measure that is meant to "accommodate the desire of [the] students to receive religious instruction."

"This is the Freedom From Religion Foundation rattling more cages, just like it always does. They would rather eliminate Christianity, in particular, completely; they don't want to have any vestiges...any remembrance or any accommodation of Christianity," the Liberty Counsel founder notes, concluding that the organization "is completely and unequivocally anti-Christian."

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