The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit ruled yesterday that the Village of Oak Park violated the Free Speech Clause by denying access to meeting space in its Village Hall to residents desiring to observe the National Day of Prayer. After certain Village residents used Village Hall for the NDP in the mid-'90's, the Village adopted a policy calculated to exclude them in future years.
Among other things, the policy required that events be "civic" and "benefit the public as a whole." The policy also forbid events that "promoted or espoused the philosophy, ideas or beliefs of any particular group." The NDP organizers then sought permission to use Village Hall for the 1998 NDP. Invoking the new policy, Village officials denied access on three grounds. First, the Village concluded that prayer -- even prayer for public officials -- could never be "civic" (which the Village itself defined to mean "relates to government").
Second, said the Village, the NDP would not "benefit the public as a whole." Third, the NDP was impermissibly based upon the ideas and beliefs of a particular group.
The organizers argued that deeming the NDP to be "non-civic" constituted viewpoint discrimination in violation of the Free Speech Clause. They also contended that giving Village officials the power to determine whether an event would "benefit the public as a whole" exceeded limits imposed by the First Amendment. They also challenged the ban on viewpoint-based events.
The Seventh Circuit agreed with each of these arguments, opening the doors of Village Hall to future use for the National Day of Prayer.
Read the the case DeBoer v. Village of Oak Park. Representing the NDP organizers were James A. Davids (now with the U.S. Department of Justice's Center for Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, formerly with Hoogendoorn, Talbot, Davids, Godfrey & Milligan), Kevin J. Todd (a partner at Hoogendoorn, Talbot), and Greg Baylor, Chief Litigation Counsel of Religious Liberty Advocates, Christian Legal Society's public interest law firm.
They worked under the auspices of Public Justice Advocates, formerly the Western Center for Law and Religious Freedom. Baylor presented argument to the Seventh Circuit panel on September 26, 2000.
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