Didn’t see that headline coming, did you?
The American Civil Liberties Union of Minnesota filed suit Wednesday against a publicly funded charter school alleging that it is promoting the Muslim religion and is leasing school space from a religious organization without following state law.
The suit was filed in U.S. District Court in Minneapolis against Tarek ibn Ziyad Academy, known as TIZA, and the Minnesota Department of Education, which the ACLU says is at fault for failing to uncover and stop the alleged transgressions. The suit names the department and Alice Seagren, the state education commissioner, as co-defendants. (snip)
But the ACLU claims the school is using federal and state money to promote religion in violation of the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.
“TIZA has received millions of dollars of taxpayer money to support what is, in essence, a private religious school,†said Charles Samuelson, state ACLU executive director.
And, yeah, while I believe the whole “separation of church and state” meme as it is pushed is overblown, Jefferson had a point in the letter he wrote to Danbury Baptists in that federal government money should not be going to a specific religion. If the feds were giving equally to all religion, sure, that would be OK. Using it for a religious school in this case? Not OK.
