Pennsylvania school district must allow After School Satan Club

by Karen Faulkner, Worthy News Correspondent

(Worthy News) – A federal judge ruled Monday that a Pennsylvania school district must allow an After School Satan Club to meet on district property on the grounds that, in accordance with First Amendment protections, “the government’s first instinct must be to forward expression rather than quash it,” the Hill reports.

The case arose after The Satanic Temple group sued Pennsylvania’s Saucon Valley School District for refusing to allow it to run an after-school club, the Hill reports. The district said it had prohibited the club from convening because permission slips didn’t make it clear that the club wasn’t district-sponsored.

In his ruling Monday, Judge John M. Gallagher of the US District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania wrote that “although The Satanic Temple, Inc.’s objectors may challenge the sanctity of this controversially named organization, the sanctity of the First Amendment’s protections must prevail.”

“When confronted with a challenge to free speech, the government’s first instinct must be to forward expression rather than quash it,” Judge Gallagher said. “Particularly when the content is controversial or inconvenient. Nothing less is consistent with the expressed purpose of American government to secure the core, innate rights of its people.”

Representing The Satanic Temple, the ACLU said in a statement after the ruling: “In a victory for free speech and religious freedom, a federal court has ruled that the Saucon Valley School District must allow the After School Satan Club to meet in district facilities.”

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