Hawaiian schools exclude Good News Clubs

Christian missionaries arrived in Hawaii in 1820. A survey by the Pew Research Center in 2014, the most recent year for which data was available, found that over 60 percent of Hawaiians identified as Christians. Yet as a recently filed lawsuit demonstrates, many public school administrators appear not only indifferent to but openly hostile to religious belief.

On Tuesday, Child Evangelism Fellowship, a Christian nonprofit that sponsors after-school Good News Clubs for elementary and middle school children, sued the Hawaii State Department of Education and four superintendents over alleged discriminatory treatment. CEF contends that in 2022, administrators at six elementary schools denied applications to allow Good News Clubs to meet while permitting other, nonreligious groups.

In a 34-page complaint, attorneys with Orlando-based Liberty Counsel listed a range of reasons school officials provided for denial of applications for club use of school facilities—reasons the attorneys contend are “pretextual.” Those included lack of space, the presence of student artwork and electronics in classrooms, and fear that school officials might mistake CEF staff for trespassers.

In some instances, school officials more directly objected to CEF programs. Good News Clubs teach children about the Bible and God’s love for them while encouraging character development In a Jan. 12, 2023, letter attached to the complaint, Ned Uemae, principal of Nu’uanu Elementary School in the Honolulu School District, informed CEF it could not host its after-school program because it was religious in nature. According to the suit, Lincoln Elementary Principal Jacqueline Ornellas told CEF over the phone that her “school administration did not like the idea of a Good News Club’s meeting at Lincoln Elementary School.”

In the end, all of the ministry’s applications to use space at Hawaii schools were denied. Meanwhile, other organizations such as the Cub Scouts and Girl Scouts were allowed to meet.

CEF has never lost a lawsuit over access to school facilities, said Liberty Counsel’s Mat Staver. He attributes that to a two-decades-old Supreme Court ruling in favor of CEF that directly addressed a situation in New York where club access was denied based on a policy that prohibited any groups on campus from providing religious instruction. Writing for the court majority, Justice Clarence Thomas rejected the notion that religious instruction invalidates the constitutionality of character development programs like Good News Clubs.

“What matters for free speech clause purposes is that there is no logical difference in kind between the invocation of Christianity by the Club and the invocation of teamwork, loyalty, or patriotism by other associations to provide a foundation for their lessons,” wrote Thomas.

Thomas also rejected the argument—one echoed in Hawaii school principals’ concerns over the clubs’ religious nature—that schools would be violating the Constitution’s establishment clause if they allowed the clubs access. “It cannot be said that the danger that children would misperceive the endorsement of religion is any greater than the danger that they would perceive a hostility toward the religious viewpoint if the Club were excluded from the public forum,” wrote Thomas.

In March 2023, CEF sued the Providence Public School District in Rhode Island for denying its clubs equal access to school facilities. The district settled the case in July, agreeing to allow the Good News Clubs access on the same basis as other clubs and to pay the ministry’s costs and attorneys’ fees—the amount of which is still being litigated.

That favorable result is common, said Staver, who pointed to a broken educational system as the reason why so many administrators continue to oppose the right of religious clubs to meet on campus. He said that for every lawsuit over equal access that they file, another two dozen are resolved out of court when school administrators are warned about the law.

“It’s surprising that people that go into education to teach children end up forgetting why they’re there and use their position from a very secularist standpoint to undermine their values—particularly Christian values,” said Staver. “I’m surprised at how many people in the educational system, particularly in leadership, have ultimately become really ideologically bankrupt and anti-Christian.”

Liberty Counsel also filed a motion Tuesday to block the schools from denying the clubs equal access to facilities. A hearing on the motion will be scheduled in the near future.