WASHINGTON (Feb. 28) - Every Thursday after school, children gather in a white clapboard church in tiny Milford, N.Y., to learn Scripture, play games and listen to Bible stories.
The organizers of the Good News Club would rather hold the gatherings at a public school, after class lets out for the day. But the school system won't allow it.
That refusal is now at the center of a closely watched church-state dispute that the U.S. Supreme Court was hearing on Wednesday.
When the Milford school district denied the club's request in 1996, it said the meetings amounted to worship and that permission to use the school, even after hours, would put a crack in the separation between church and state.
The Rev. Stephen Fournier and his wife, Darleen, who run the club, sued, arguing that their free speech rights were being violated. They questioned why they could not use the school, as did groups such as the Girl Scouts or the 4-H Club.
``I just want to use space that my tax dollars pay for,'' the Stephen Fournier said.
The Fourniers currently run the club in their church, the Milford Center Community Bible Church, just a few miles down the road from the district's K-12 school. They claim the school - the lone public school in Milford - would be more convenient for the about 20 children in kindergarten through sixth grade who participate. The group meets once a week and aims to teach grade-school children Christian moral values through Bible stories, songs and games.
But Frank W. Miller, a lawyer for the school system, says the Good News Club meetings add up to outright religious proselytizing. ``This is no different than Sunday school,'' Miller says.
A federal judge sided with the school district, as did the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals last year. However, the 8th U.S. Circuit in 1994 ruled in favor of another Good News Club on free speech grounds in a similar case from Missouri.
The Supreme Court agreed to hear an appeal from the Fourniers.
The Fourniers sued with the help of the Rutherford Institute, a conservative legal group.
More than a dozen friend-of-the-court briefs have been filed in support of the Fourniers from organizations representing groups such as the National Council of Churches and the American Muslim Council. Eleven states - Alabama, Iowa, Louisiana, Mississippi, Nebraska, Ohio, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Utah and Virginia - have also backed the Fourniers.
The American Civil Liberties Union, the Anti-Defamation League and state and national school boards associations are backing the school system.
Milford, a rural farm community of 2,800 about 60 miles west of Albany, N.Y., is one of numerous places around the country with a Good News Club.
The case is the first key church-state case the high court has heard since last June when justices ruled against prayer at school football games.
Jay Worona, counsel for the New York State School Boards Association, says a loss by Milford could force districts to close their doors to all sorts of groups because the alternative would be opening their doors to groups that could be divisive.
Rutherford Institute president John Whitehead said the current system is unacceptable because it sets up school officials to be monitors of what is and what is not religious.
AP-NY-02-28-01 0329EST
Copyright 2001 The Associated Press.