First Liberty Briefing: Why Excluding All Religions is Religious Discrimination

The Lansing Housing Commission in Michigan allowed residents to use a community room for birthday parties, tutoring, and events. However, the commission refused to grant access to the community rooms for “religious worship, services, or programs.” Learn why religious discrimination is not cured by discriminating against all religions equally at FirstLiberty.org/Briefing.

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The Lansing Housing Commission provides subsidized housing in Central Michigan. In many of the facilities, the Housing Commission provides a Community Room. The Commission often grants access to those Community Rooms for birthday parties, Boy Scout meetings, tutoring sessions and other community events. However the Commission refused to grant access to the Community Rooms for religious worship services or programs.

His Healing Hands Medical Clinic provides a range of services to the community inside the Housing Commission’s facilities. When Clinic leaders asked to use the Community Room for religious services on Sundays, the church was excluded.

The Commission explained that it was welcome to use the Community Room to meet the physical needs of the community, but could not say anything about Jesus or bring any Bibles with them.

In court, the Commission argued that their policy was permissible because it denied use of the Community Rooms to all religions equally.

But the court rejected that reasoning.

Excluding all religions is the very definition of religious discrimination – which is not cured by discriminating against all religions equally. Government Commissions are not permitted to pick and choose which viewpoint it will permit in public places and which it will refute.

The First Amendment requires our government to be neutral in dealing with various religious viewpoints that make up our public square  

To learn how First Liberty is protecting Religious Liberty for all Americans, visit FirstLiberty.org.

First Liberty Institute is the largest organization in the nation dedicated exclusively to protecting religious freedom for all Americans. Find out more here.

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