2. (§9.10) Use of Facilities by Outside Groups
The EAA is inapplicable to the analysis of cases involving requests by outside groups to use school facilities. In 1993, the Supreme Court held that a school board that regularly rented facilities to outside groups could not deny a church group’s use of school facilities. Lamb’s Chapel v. Ctr. Moriches Union Free Sch. Dist., 508 U.S. 384 (1993). The school board allowed other presentations on child rearing, but not those given from a religious perspective. The Supreme Court found that, even if the school were a nonpublic forum, the school’s policy violated the First Amendment because it constituted viewpoint discrimination.
In Good News/Good Sports Club v. School District of City of Ladue, 28 F.3d 1501 (8th Cir. 1994), cert. denied, 515 U.S. 1173 (1995), the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals struck down a school policy that closed the school facilities between 3 p.m. and 6 p.m. to all outside groups except for the Scouts and athletic...
