Court upholds religious advertising in Arizona public school. (AU Bulletin).A federal appeals court ruled in May that an Arizona public school district must allow the advertisement of a Christian camp on school grounds since the district also permits secular groups to promote their programs. The American Center The American Center is a high-rise tower in Southfield, Michigan. It was built in 1975 and stands at 26 floors, with one basement floor, for a total of 27. The building's main use is that of a typical office tower. It also includes a parking garage and retail spaces. for Law and Justice (ACLJ ACLJ American Center for Law and Justice ACLJ Appleseed Center for Law and Justice (Washington, DC) ) sued the Scottsdale Unified School District Scottsdale Unified School District (SUSD) is a school district that covers most of the city of Scottsdale, Arizona. It was founded in 1896 and serves 27,000 students. The district claims to be "Arizona's Most Excelling School District" as 21 of its 33 schools have a rating of in 2000 representing a Christian summer camp that tried to advertise through the school. The group that operates the camp, called "A Little Sonshine From Arizona," argued that the school district's policy barfing overtly religious advertising on school grounds was a form of discrimination. A three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled May 22 that the school policy is unconstitutional. "The district cannot refuse to distribute literature advertising a program with underlying religious content where it distributes quite similar literature for secular summer camps, but it can refuse to distribute literature that itself contains proselytizing language," the 9th Circuit held. The ACLJ's lawsuit was funded by the Alliance Defense Fund The Alliance Defense Fund ("ADF") is a conservative Christian non-profit organization with the stated goal of "defending the right to hear and speak the Truth through strategy, training, funding, and litigation. (ADF (1) (Application Development Facility) An IBM programmer-oriented mainframe application generator that runs under IMS. (2) (Automatic Document Feeder) A paper stacker that feeds one sheet of paper at a time into the unit. ), an umbrella group representing Religious Right interests. Several major evangelical groups founded the ADF, including James Dobson's Focus on the Family, Bill Bright's Campus Crusade for Christ Campus Crusade for Christ is an interdenominational Christian organization, focusing on evangelism and discipleship in over 190 countries around the world. Its mission is "to win people to Christ, build them in their faith, and send them out to win, build and send others. and D. James Kennedy's Coral Ridge Ministries. An attorney for the Scottsdale school district told the Associated Press that the district might ask the full 9th Circuit or the U.S. Supreme Court to reverse the three-j0dge panel's ruling in Hills v. Scottsdale Unified School District. |
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