Today’s blacklisted American: Rhode Island school district blacklists Christian afterschool club because it is Christian – Behind The Black – Robert Zimmerman

They’re coming for you next: The Providence school district in Rhode Island has now been sued by the Child Evangelism Fellowship (CEF) for unfairly blacklisting CEF’s afterschool Good News clubs from using school facilities for meetings,

For nearly two years, the Providence Public School District has blocked CEF Rhode Island from hosting its elementary school Good News Clubs on district school facilities. However, other organizations such as Boys and Girls Clubs, Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts, YMCA, and Girls on the Run are given free use of school facilities for after school programs.

Note too that the school district had already approved CEF’s Good News clubs in 2019. According to the lawsuit [pdf], filed by the non-profit legal firm Liberty Counsel:

The District approved CEF Rhode Island’s August 2019 Rental of School Facilities application, allowing CEF Rhode Island to lead an afterschool Good News Club at William D’Abate Elementary School for the 2019–2020 school year, without any facility rental fee. Forty-eight children signed up for the club, but the club could only accommodate twenty children due to space limitations at the school.

When the Wuhan panic shuttered everything in 2020, this club stopped meeting. When CEF officials contacted district in 2021 to restart the club, they found district officials uncooperative, apparently looking for reasons to deny the club access. For the next year and a half district officials stonewalled CEF, repeatedly demanding new documents and then becoming non-responsive when CEF fulfilled every request…..