Enfield Board Votes To Appeal Graduation Ruling

The Enfield Board of Education reversed itself Tuesday night, voting this time to appeal a ruling of a federal court judge that said the school district could not hold its high school graduations in a Bloomfield megachurch.  As WNPR’s Jeff Cohen reports, the appeal, if successful, would likely not effect this year’s graduations.

 

Federal court Judge Janet Hall ruled that holding the graduations at the First Cathedral Baptist Church would amount to an unconstitutional government endorsement of religion.

 

Vincent McCarthy is the attorney with the American Center for Law and Justice that says it plans to appeal on behalf of the Enfield Board of Education.  He says that it’s probably too late to change the course of this year’s graduations, which will be held at the town’s respective high schools.

 

“The judge’s rationale that the iconography and religious images constitute an endorsement of religion has been thoroughly rejected by every other court that’s heard that issue.  Any reasonable observer would know that those icons, those images, those crosses were put there by the church, not the state, and therefore cannot possibly constitute and endorsement of religion.”

 

The website for McCarthy’s organization, the American Center for Law and Justice, says it is a leader in Christian legal advocacy.  It is opposed in this case by the American Civil Liberties Union of Connecticut.  David McGuire is the ACLU's staff attorney, and he's confident the trial court ruling will be upheld on appeal.

 

"In this case there's been excessive entanglement between the board members, namely the board chair, Greg Stokes, and members of political organizations such as the Family Institute of Connecticut.  And taken in the whole, the person sitting in that church would see a lot of visible iconography, which is impossible to miss, and would also understand that the board didn't necessarily take all their options into consideration."

 

The Family Institute of Connecticut says its mission is to encourage and strengthen the family as the foundation of society.

 

Enfield's graduations are in two weeks.