NEWS ALERT:
On June 29, Federal Judge Loretta Preska issued an injunction permitting churches to hold weekend worship services in
public schools.
As you know, the NYC Department of Education has decided to kick out "houses of worship" who worship in public schools starting February 12, 2012. It meant that houses of worship will be excluded from renting schools for worship. We had a major victory, but the battle is not yet over. The Second Court of Appeal is now expected to vote on this issue prior to the beginning of the school year in September. At the legislative level, we had another major victory at the NYS State Senate, where State Senators voted 55-7 in our favor to pass legislation to allow houses of worship to rent from public schools. We are still advocating now at the New York State Assembly, where Speaker Silver has not allowed the bill to come up for a vote. At the New York City level, Councilman Fernando Cabrera has introduced two bills and now awaits for Speaker Quinn to keep her promise for the bill to come up for a vote.
Even if your house of worship is not being evicted, this is a matter of freedom of religion, freedom of speech and freedom of gathering in public spaces. If we do not take our stand now, the state will take more religious liberty away from us. In addition, we should be concerned about all houses of worship, not just our own.
We urge you to call your State and City elected officials so there is a groundswell of support demanding this infraction of our religious liberties be lifted. If our state and city legislators do not hear our voices they will continue to take more religious liberties away from us.
This website is dedicated to inform you of the course of actions you can take to reverse this form of discrimination against houses of worship. We have included a calendar of events, media advisory, petition forms and flyers and contact information.
IMPORTANT: Click here to call and email every NYS Assembly member who have not sign on to the bill. We have an email list ready for you use. These NYS Assembly members need to hear from you this week!
