A public school district in Tennessee has just learned an expensive lesson about what happens when you discriminate among religions.
Some parents at Chimneyrock Elementary School in Cordova, Tenn., hit the roof after the Satanic Temple, a nontheistic religious group that supports separation of church and state, applied to run an after-school club.
An evangelical Christian Good News Club already operates at the school, but officials didn’t want to give the Temple the same access for its After School Satan Club (ASSC). Blogger Hemant Mehta listed the numerous ways school officials in Shelby County made things difficult for the Temple, including assessing the Temple “security fees” that the Good News Club did not have to pay, failing to respond to the Temple’s application in a timely manner, arranging for meetings of the club long after the school day had ended and charging the ASSC a $30 per-meeting fee.
You can guess what happened next. The Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF) sued on behalf of the Temple. FFRF has announced that the case has been settled. The school district will pay $15,000, mostly in attorneys’ fees. The Temple will receive a nominal fee of just under $200.
But that’s not all. As FFRF noted in a press release, “Further, the Shelby County Board of Education has agreed not to discriminate against the organization with regard to its requests to rent and use school board property at Chimneyrock Elementary School; the Temple will be subject to the same rules and requirements as other nonprofit organizations seeking to rent or use the school’s facilities.”
None of this was necessary. School officials should have realized early on that they could not play favorites among religions, and they should have explained that to the parents and clergy members who protested over the matter.
The $15,000 the district squandered on this case would have been better spent in the classroom. Let this be a lesson to other districts: When it comes to religion, equal treatment is the rule. Follow it.
Photo: Protesters gather outside Chimneyrock Elementary School in Cordova, Tenn.
