OH: UA library accused of religious discrimination
The Columbus Dispatch reports:
A meeting titled “Politics and the Pulpit” has spurred a federal lawsuit about freedom of speech and religion filed against the Upper Arlington Public Library.
Citizens for Community Values, a Cincinnati-based social-conservative group, claimed in a suit filed yesterday in U.S. District Court in Columbus that the library violated the group’s constitutional rights by first approving and then canceling a meeting Feb. 27 at the library at 2800 Tremont Rd.
Library officials counter that the group was not barred from using the library meeting space to discuss religion or any other topic. But library policy prohibits prayer and singing as “inherent elements of religious service.” . . .
The Cincinnati group is joined in the lawsuit by the Alliance Defense Fund, a national organization that has been involved in more than two dozen legal fights about abortion, homosexuality and religious freedom that eventually were decided by the U.S. Supreme Court.
ADF press release: Ohio library: no ‘elements of a religious service’ allowed