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Atheist group sues for school Satan clubs and against school Christian groups

The nonprofit claims to advocate for “separation of state and church” through their legal efforts by pressuring local school districts to disband Christian clubs in which their students participate.

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The Satanic Temple launches their clubs at schools where “other religious groups are operating on campus” to provide a “safe and inclusive alternative.” File Image.

Attorneys for the Freedom From Religion Foundation have embarked on a campaign of filing legal challenges against school districts with Christian clubs in recent months while also submitting lawsuits supportive of Satan clubs at government schools.

 

The nonprofit claims to advocate for “separation of state and church” through their legal efforts by pressuring local school districts to disband Christian clubs in which their students participate. Attorneys for the organization, for example, sent a letter earlier this year to Hamilton County School District in Florida requesting that they disallow a Fellowship of Christian Athletes chapter. Administrators told the Freedom From Religion Foundation weeks later that the school “investigated the allegations” and asked the “small group of fifth grade students” to disperse.

 

 

The Freedom From Religion Foundation celebrated the move as a recognition that “students have the First Amendment right to be free from religious indoctrination in their public schools.”

 

“The Hamilton County School District ought to know better than allowing a religious group free access to students during the day,” Freedom From Religion Foundation Co-President Annie Gaylor said in a statement. “School districts exist to educate, not indoctrinate into religion.”

 

Days before they sent their initial letter, however, the Freedom From Religion Foundation announced that they had filed a federal lawsuit on behalf of the Satanic Temple against the Shelby County Board of Education in Tennessee since they barred the organization from starting an After School Satan Club. The group tries to launch the clubs only at schools where “other religious groups are operating on campus” to provide a “safe and inclusive alternative.”

 

 

The lawsuit contended that the Shelby County Board of Education had “chilled the Satanic Temple’s speech and substantially burdened its ability to exercise its religiously motivated practice of offering inclusive, welcoming religious clubs at public schools.”

 

Debate over the legitimacy of the Satanic Temple, which explicitly rejects belief in a literal Satan, and the extent to which the First Amendment meaningfully protects Satanism reemerged last year when Michael Cassidy, a Christian veteran, destroyed a Satanic Temple shrine in the Iowa State Capitol. Cassidy now faces as many as five years in prison since the progressive county attorney applied hate crime enhancements to his criminal mischief charges.

 

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