Keep Proselytizing Out Of Public Schools, AU Tells Supreme Court.Public schools should have the right to refuse space to religious groups seeking to proselytize young children, Americans United for Separation of Church and State Americans United for Separation of Church and State (Americans United or AU for short) is a religious freedom advocacy group in the United States which promotes the separation of church and state, a legal doctrine seen by the AU as being enshrined in the Establishment has advised the Supreme Court. Americans United presented its argument in a friend-of-the-court brief filed before the high court last month in the case The Good News Club v. Milford Central School Good News Club v. Milford Central School, , held that when a government operates a "limited public forum," it may not discriminate against speech that takes place within that forum on the basis of the viewpoint it . The legal controversy centers around a New York public school that has refused to rent its building to a religious group that wants to hold evangelistic classes for young children right after the school day ends. (See "Evangelism, Public Schools and the Supreme Court," January 2001 Church & State.) Stephen Fournier, a local pastor in Milford, N.Y., wants to use the school for weekly meetings of his Good News Club that start just six minutes after classes end. Good News Clubs, which are sponsored by the national Child Evangelism Fellowship Child Evangelism Fellowship (CEF) is an international evangelical nonprofit organization founded by Jesse Overholtzer in 1937, headquartered in Warrenton, Missouri. The organization lists as its purpose to teach the Gospel to boys and girls and to get them involved in local , are aimed at converting children as young as 5 and 6 to fundamentalist Christianity. School officials note that while other outside groups are permitted to use the school, none have requested to do so at the very end of the school day on an ongoing basis. In the brief, AU argues that young children are unable to distinguish between events that are school sponsored and those that are not. The brief also contends that it will be necessary for school officials to escort students to meetings of the Good News Cub, creating too much of a connection between the school and a private religious group. "No child between the ages of six to twelve, under the circumstances of this case, can reasonably be expected to appreciate that, despite all of the similarities between Good News Club classes and his or her other classes the latter, but not the former, are school sponsored," asserts the brief. Americans United filed the brief jointly with the American Civil Liberties Union American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), nonpartisan organization devoted to the preservation and extension of the basic rights set forth in the U.S. Constitution. , the New York Civil Liberties Union The New York Civil Liberties Union (NYCLU) is one of the nation's foremost defenders of civil liberties and civil rights. Founded in 1951 as the New York affiliate of the American Civil Liberties Union, it is a not-for-profit, nonpartisan organization with six chapters and nearly Foundation, the American Jewish Committee
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