2y ago

PA school district must pay Satanists $200,000 after lawsuit over After School Satan Club

www.friendlyatheist.com

19 comments

Our tax dollars at work.
- On the upshot, the board members who were responsible for this stupid decision were all voted out. Here's what TST responded when asked for comment:
  Of course, money is often no object for under-qualified opportunistic public officials who are all too willing to waste public funds in the name of misguided crusades designed to leverage public fear and ignorance into votes. In Saucon Valley, however, four school board incumbents were voted out in favor of challengers who ran a campaign primarily focused on the enormous, pointless waste they incurred by violating TST’s civil liberties.
  
  Now that truly warms the heart
- Definitely took up a lot of time, the money itself wasn't paid by the school district though.
  The district will pay the Satanists $1 in nominal damages and their insurance provider will pay the $200,000 in legal fees. The settlement agreement makes clear the payment is “not an admission of wrongdoing,” but rather a recognition of the fact that there was indeed a “constitutional injury resulting from the District’s decision to rescind approval for Plaintiff’s use of SVSD facilities.”
  
  The insurance premiums are paid by taxes, and how is that not an admission of wrongdoing?
- I know how you probably meant that, but you're accidentally right. One of their tenets is "The freedoms of others should be respected, including the freedom to offend. To willfully and unjustly encroach upon the freedoms of another is to forgo one's own.".
  The payout shows that they simply were trying to follow their tenet and not looking to profit. That's very noble and just of them.
  
  I actually don't think it has anything to do with that tenet. It's simply a basic principle of fairness: if you're going to allow Christian clubs, you should allow Satanic ones, too. TST doesn't attempt to set up After School Satan Clubs in schools that don't have a Christian club, which goes to show that it isn't about offense but equal rights.
  Moreover, TST doesn't try to force other people to obey their tenets. One of the things that Satanists hate about Christianity is that they try to force people who are not in their religion to obey the rules of their religion. Satanism doesn't (and shouldn't) do the same thing.
- The Satanists lawyers are getting paid by the school board for winning the Satanists’ case.
  How much taxpayer money should be awarded as damages to the taxpayer plaintiffs?
- Its my belief that they have plenty of members that are lawyers although there is not any information I can dig up on numbers. They have lots of legal battles that should cost a shit ton of money that I'm not sure they could all fund on their own.
Saucon deez nuts
Love the work that TST is doing.
Evil is as evil does!
- So true, those school board members are so evil trying to silence religion freedom.
ASS clubs do not promote Satan
Heh this whole thing is gold.
But are they now permitted to have the club there? The article didn't make it clear.
- In his 37-page ruling, U.S. District Court Judge John M. Gallagher said that the “District must permit the ASSC to meet at the location and on the dates upon which the parties contingently agreed… during the current school year.”
  About 10 paragraphs from the end of the article. I hope there is a community for these kinds of takedowns. I enjoyed that article.
- In his 37-page ruling, U.S. District Court Judge John M. Gallagher said that the “District must permit the ASSC to meet at the location and on the dates upon which the parties contingently agreed… during the current school year.”
The real good news club

19 comments