Blacklist followup: Rhode Island school district fails to respond to lawsuit accusing it of discriminating against Christians
Oppressive Rhode Island
Bring a gun to a knife fight: Because a Rhode Island school district in Providence failed to respond to a lawsuit accusing it of discriminating against Christians, it has now defaulted and awaits a final judgment against it.
Liberty Counsel filed a lawsuit against the school district on March 10, 2023. The Providence Public School District did not answer the complaint by the court’s deadline. Yesterday, Liberty Counsel filed an application to enter a default against the school district which will allow Liberty Counsel to seek a final judgment against the defendants. Today, the federal court entered the default against the district and its superintendent. Having raised no defense to the lawsuit, the district will be subject to a judgment requiring it to provide equal access to the Good News Clubs. Liberty Counsel will also pursue attorney’s fees and costs against the defendants.
This is a followup on a March 2023 blacklist column. Though the school district had previously welcomed the Good News Clubs, a Christian afterschool program run by the Child Evangelism Fellowship (CEF), to use school facilities for meetings, in 2021 school district officials blacklisted it without explanation, and then stonewalled CEF officials as well as the school’s principal (who wanted the club in his school) for almost two years. Meanwhile, the district was allowing many other clubs, some very leftwing, access to facilities.
In March CEF enlisted the legal non-profit Liberty Counsel and filed a lawsuit [pdf] against the school district as well as its superintendent, Dr. Javier Montanez.
The lawsuit had demanded that CEF be given immediate access to district facilities “equal to access provide to similarly situation nonreligious organizations,” payment of “actual damages in accordance with the evidence at trial,” nominal damages of $100, and payment of any legal costs.
By defaulting, the district has essentially admitted that it was certain to lose and recognized that a quick default would reduce the costs it would have to pay, both to its own lawyers as well as to Liberty Counsel and CEF. CEF is moreover not likely to demand more than that $100 minimum amount, as long as it can get its Good News Club back into the schools quickly.
As I noted in March, this victory against the Providence School District is not likely to change much.
This is not the only case of vindictive blacklisting and oppression by government officials in Rhode Island. Its school system has attacked and slandered parents for asking for school curriculums, blacklisted teachers for questioning the introduction of racist and Marxist anti-American material into history classes, maintained discriminatory racist hiring practices, banned Christian books from its public libraries, and destroyed doctors for not following its insane and irrational COVID mandates.
In 2022 its state legislators proposed imposing exorbitant fines on anyone who refused to get the COVID jabs, essentially making those individuals second class citizens. Meanwhile, one of its senators in Congress, Democrat Sheldon Whitehouse, has repeatedly proposed criminalizing anyone who dared disagree with the left’s agenda.
Rhode Island, established by Roger Williams to create a haven for religious freedom, is now a cesspool of religious and political oppression. This one lawsuit victory removes only a very tiny spoonful from that very large pile of manure.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
Oppressive Rhode Island
Bring a gun to a knife fight: Because a Rhode Island school district in Providence failed to respond to a lawsuit accusing it of discriminating against Christians, it has now defaulted and awaits a final judgment against it.
Liberty Counsel filed a lawsuit against the school district on March 10, 2023. The Providence Public School District did not answer the complaint by the court’s deadline. Yesterday, Liberty Counsel filed an application to enter a default against the school district which will allow Liberty Counsel to seek a final judgment against the defendants. Today, the federal court entered the default against the district and its superintendent. Having raised no defense to the lawsuit, the district will be subject to a judgment requiring it to provide equal access to the Good News Clubs. Liberty Counsel will also pursue attorney’s fees and costs against the defendants.
This is a followup on a March 2023 blacklist column. Though the school district had previously welcomed the Good News Clubs, a Christian afterschool program run by the Child Evangelism Fellowship (CEF), to use school facilities for meetings, in 2021 school district officials blacklisted it without explanation, and then stonewalled CEF officials as well as the school’s principal (who wanted the club in his school) for almost two years. Meanwhile, the district was allowing many other clubs, some very leftwing, access to facilities.
In March CEF enlisted the legal non-profit Liberty Counsel and filed a lawsuit [pdf] against the school district as well as its superintendent, Dr. Javier Montanez.
The lawsuit had demanded that CEF be given immediate access to district facilities “equal to access provide to similarly situation nonreligious organizations,” payment of “actual damages in accordance with the evidence at trial,” nominal damages of $100, and payment of any legal costs.
By defaulting, the district has essentially admitted that it was certain to lose and recognized that a quick default would reduce the costs it would have to pay, both to its own lawyers as well as to Liberty Counsel and CEF. CEF is moreover not likely to demand more than that $100 minimum amount, as long as it can get its Good News Club back into the schools quickly.
As I noted in March, this victory against the Providence School District is not likely to change much.
This is not the only case of vindictive blacklisting and oppression by government officials in Rhode Island. Its school system has attacked and slandered parents for asking for school curriculums, blacklisted teachers for questioning the introduction of racist and Marxist anti-American material into history classes, maintained discriminatory racist hiring practices, banned Christian books from its public libraries, and destroyed doctors for not following its insane and irrational COVID mandates.
In 2022 its state legislators proposed imposing exorbitant fines on anyone who refused to get the COVID jabs, essentially making those individuals second class citizens. Meanwhile, one of its senators in Congress, Democrat Sheldon Whitehouse, has repeatedly proposed criminalizing anyone who dared disagree with the left’s agenda.
Rhode Island, established by Roger Williams to create a haven for religious freedom, is now a cesspool of religious and political oppression. This one lawsuit victory removes only a very tiny spoonful from that very large pile of manure.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
Biden’s DOJ recommends no jail time for abortion activist who vandalized church, assaulted worker – NY Post
President Biden’s Justice Department is recommending no jail time for an abortion activist who scrawled “F–k Catholics” on a church’s walls, assaulted a church employee and defaced several religious statues in reaction to the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade last summer, according to a report.
The Justice Department put forward a plea agreement, reviewed by Fox News Digital, that calls for three years’ probation and no jail time for Maeve Nota, who was arrested June 28, 2022, for vandalizing the St. Louise Catholic Church in Bellevue, Washington.
Nota, a transgender man, was charged with a hate crime and assault for vandalizing the church, and tossing rocks at and spray-painting an employee of the church, according to the Bellevue Reporter.
Nota smashed two of the church’s glass doors, defaced religious statues and painted “women haters,” “kid groomers,” “we hate gay people,” “rot in hell,” and “F–k Catholics” on the church’s walls, the newspaper reported, citing charging documents.
“The graffiti painted on church walls and artifacts was anti-Catholic,” the Bellevue Police Department said at the time on Twitter. “[A] hate crime includes acts that ‘Defaces religious real property with words, symbols, or items that are derogatory to persons of the faith associated with the property.’
Some contrasted the Biden Justice Department’s plea deal in Nota’s case with its response to pro-life activist Mark Houck, who was arrested in September 2022 after being indicted on federal charges that he intimidated people at a Planned Parenthood facility in Philadelphia.
Prosecutors said he pushed a 72-year-old man who was escorting two patients from the clinic on Oct. 13, 2021.
Houck — who claimed that the elderly man had been harassing his son — was charged with violating the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act.
“It is very clear that the Biden Justice Department has politicized and weaponized the FACE Act to go after pro-life Christians praying outside of abortion clinics like Mark Houck while turning a blind eye to violent felons terrorizing and badly damaging Catholic churches like Maeve Nota,” Mike Davis, founder of the Article III Project, a nonprofit that advocates for conservative justices, told Fox News Digital.
“The Biden Justice Department tried to put Houck in prison for 11 years for defending his son while recommending no jail time for Nota after this deranged trans terrorist badly damaged a Catholic church, fought with the police, assaulted a church employee, and scared the hell out of a little old lady praying,” Davis said.
Only Mosques are safe, churches and synagogues aren’t because they are Judeo-Christian.
It was good of you to notice and remind people of Roger Williams and why Rhode Island was settled. The irony is lost on the school district and many others. Thanks.
Spoiler: God wins.
https://tinyurl.com/4as5bvap
“Rhode Island, established by Roger Williams to create a haven for religious freedom, is now a cesspool of religious and political oppression.”
It turns out, in the end, Rhode Island couldn’t keep the puritans out!
Its way past time for Christians to fire back at those trying to ban them from the Campus
RI has a history of organized crime, along with the government corruption this entails. Organized crime (read: Mafia, although there were lots of non-Italian offshoots) has been pretty much dis-organized, but the tradition of corruption remains, which results in the sense of immunity displayed by these officials. “As long as the machine (organization, party, etc) supports me, who cares what the ‘voters’ think.”
buddhaha wrote: “but the tradition of corruption remains, which results in the sense of immunity displayed by these officials.”
America has become very corrupt, these past couple of decades. It definitely is not the America we grew up knowing and loving. It is as though there has been a fundamental transformation.