PrintBy Beverly Goldberg [7]
A Florida man has filed a religious-discrimination lawsuit against Volusia County Public Library, Director Lucinda Colee, and the county, claiming that VCPL’s New Smyrna Beach branch declined his request to conduct a seminar called “Is Religion Alive in America?” there because library policy bans use of the meeting room for sectarian programming. The February 4 action (PDF file [8]) is the second in four months for plaintiff Anthony Verdugo; in November 2009, he sued (PDF file [9]) Osceola County Public Library, Director Edward A. Kilroy, and the county after being denied a reservation to hold the same seminar at OCPL’s Hart Memorial Central Library.
Verdugo, who is executive director of the Christian Family Coalition, submitted an identically worded meeting-room request to both libraries. He described the seminar as dealing with current events “from a biblical perspective” including exploration of “what the Bible has to say about a national health care system or immigration.” During the seminar, Verdugo wrote, “we will read from the Bible, pray, and sing religious songs if that is permitted by your noise policies.” However, the meeting-room policies of both libraries specify that religious services are not allowed; Volusia County Public Library bars “religious services” and OCPL limits meeting-room use to “nonprofit, noncommercial, and nonreligious functions.”
The lawsuits claim that denial of Verdugo’s reservation requests violate his First and 14th Amendment rights to free speech and due process, as well as Florida’s Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which mirrors the 1993 federal law of the same name [10]. “Public libraries should not be posting what amounts to ‘No Religious People Allowed Here’ signs on their public meeting-room doors,” said Joel Oster, senior legal counsel for the Alliance Defense Fund, a Christian-rights advocacy group that is representing Verdugo. “Having a policy explicitly designed to exclude religious groups from speaking in public meeting rooms is blatantly unconstitutional.”
Public libraries across the country have been named in similar lawsuits for more than a decade; in July 2009 Contra Costa County (Calif.) Library lost a free-speech lawsuit [11] filed in 2004.
American Libraries, Wed, 02/17/2010 - 11:48
