NEW YORK — The city can ban Sunday religious worship services at public schools that otherwise might become state-sponsored Christian churches on weekends, a federal appeals court ruled today in a decision likely to affect dozens of schools where services are conducted each week.
The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan overturned a lower court decision and rejected arguments that the Supreme Court had opened the way for worship services to be conducted at schools.
A three-judge panel said in a 2-1 decision that the city Board of Education “had a strong basis to be wary that permitting religious worship services in schools, and thus effectively allowing schools to be converted into churches on Sunday, would be found to violate the establishment clause” of the Constitution, which bars Congress from making a law respecting an establishment of religion.
The court concluded that the nature of a school changes when religious worship services are performed.
“The church has made the school the place for the performance of its rites, and might well appear to have established itself there. The place has, at least for a time, become the church,” Judge Pierre Leval wrote for the majority. He said it was reasonable that the city was concerned it was substantially subsidizing churches because it neither charges rent for use of its space or charges for utilities.