A U.S. district court judge in California has ruled that a historic Freedom From Religion Foundation legal victory over theocratic school board members should remain in place.
FFRF, a national state/church watchdog, secured decisive court decisions against unconstitutional religious practices by the Chino Valley Unified School District Board, winning before a federal district court in 2016 and the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in 2018. The board filed a motion to reopen the case on July 31 of this year, arguing that the injunction issued in 2016 by the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California should be lifted. The board claimed that the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2022 decision in Kennedy v. Bremerton School District meant that the legal basis for the injunction no longer exists.
U.S. District Judge Jesus G. Bernal was completely unpersuaded.
“Defendants argue that the court should grant relief from the order . . . because the legal basis underpinning this court’s order and the 9th Circuit’s opinion was overruled by the Supreme Court’s decision in Kennedy v. Bremerton School District,” he ruled. “The court finds that defendants have not articulated a sufficient basis for relief.”
The ruling sided with FFRF in multiple ways. First, it said that the three-year delay between the Kennedy decision and Chino Valley’s filing of this case was unjustified.
“Defendants waited over three years after Kennedy to file this motion,” the judge stated. “Defendants provide no reason, let alone ‘exceptional circumstances,’ to justify this three-year delay.”
And, the ruling said, “the main purpose behind requiring ‘exceptional circumstances’” when defendants ask the court to reverse prior rulings “is to preserve the ‘finality of judgements.’” Defendants shouldn’t be allowed to get another bite at the apple years after losing just because they don’t like that the court ruled against them. The Chino Valley School Board was unable to prove its case otherwise.
More significantly, the ruling stated, “even if the court found that defendants brought the motion within a reasonable time, the court is not persuaded that Kennedy represents a ‘significant change[] in the law.” The Supreme Court distinguished coach Joe Kennedy’s private prayers from its line of Establishment Clause cases. It found “prayer involving public school students to be problematically coercive”; the coach’s prayers were not “publicly broadcast or recited to a captive audience” and he did not require or expect students to participate. “Nothing in Kennedy persuades this court that the Supreme Court intended to overrule its line of school prayer cases banning ‘prayer involving public school students’ that is ‘problematically coercive,’” states the district court ruling.
In summary, the court ruled for the Freedom From Religion Foundation, meaning that its historic victory protecting students’ First Amendment rights is preserved.
“We are so pleased that reason and our secular Constitution have prevailed here, and that the families in this school district will not have to endure coercive prayers in order to attend school board meetings,” comments Annie Laurie Gaylor, FFRF co-president.
As a result of the prior lawsuit, the school district was ordered to pay more than $275,000 in FFRF’s legal fees. FFRF’s attorneys plan to file a motion seeking additional fees. “The district fails to protect taxpayer money as long as it continues to pursue this renewed attempt to coerce families to engage in prayer,” adds Gaylor.
The Freedom From Religion Foundation is a national nonprofit organization with over 42,000 members and several chapters nationwide, including more than 5,300 members and two chapters in California. FFRF’s purposes are to protect the constitutional principle of separation between church and state and to educate the public on matters relating to nontheism.
