Town's ban on renting space for religious services a First Amendment violation

The Department of Justice Tuesday joined a religious discrimination lawsuit filed by a South Carolina Baptist church opposing its hometown’s ban on religious groups holding services in its civic center.

The Justice Department said it supports the Redeemer Fellowship of Edisto Island, which in August filed a lawsuit against Edisto Beach, South Carolina over the ban.

Edisto Beach adopted the ban earlier this year because it was afraid that allowing Redeemer Fellowship to rent space in the civic center violated the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause, which imposes the separation of church and state.

But the Justice Department said such a ban runs counter to the Establishment Clause.

“Indeed the town’s reading of the First Amendment is exactly backwards: the town seeks to permit the content and viewpoint discrimination against religious worship that Free Speech and Free Exercise Clauses prohibit and to prohibit equal access for religious expression that the Establishment Clause permits,” the Justice Department lawyers wrote.

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