Haitian children in food line (HotSpot)
The Appignani Humanist Legal Center sent a letter to Robbinsdale Area Schools after students packed meals for starving children in Haiti
Alliance Defending Freedom reported:
Alliance Defending Freedom sent a letterFriday to Robbinsdale Area Schools after an atheist group complainedabout students participating in a community service project at a church to pack meals for needy families in Haiti.
“Public schools should encourage students to participate in as many community service opportunities as possible. The Constitution does not prohibit students from cooperating with a religious organization to help starving families, which is not any sort of government endorsement of religion,” said Legal Counsel Matt Sharp. “Neutrality toward religion does not permit schools to discriminate against beneficial programs simply because they are run by Christians. That is not neutrality but the very hostility toward religion that the First Amendment forbids.”
Students at the School of Engineering and Arts recently visited Calvary Lutheran Church to participate in a volunteer program sponsored by Feed My Starving Children, a non-profit organization run by Christians that seeks to eliminate world hunger for children. As part of the program, students prepared pre-packed meals that would be sent to malnourished children across the globe and did not engage in any religious activities.
The Alliance Defending Freedom letter explains that “public schools may constitutionally work with religious charities to provide food or other secular goods and services to impoverished children.” Moreover, the letter states, “Courts have consistently upheld instances where schools cooperated with religious organizations…where they had a valid educational purpose for doing so.”
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