The Genesis Commission, a Christian group that teaches creation science, filed suit April 26 against the city of Portage, Wisconsin, after the city library refused the group’s request to use the library meeting room. Ironically, the suit came just a year after group founder Chris Pfeifer won a similar lawsuit against the city of West Allis, Wisconsin.
Portage Public Library’s policy prohibits meetings promoting products, services, political candidates, or religion. Pfeifer told the Associated Press April 26 that he seeks venues in public libraries “because that’s where school kids and their parents would be willing to go for a workshop such as this.”
Two weeks earlier, plaintiff attorney Matthew Staver of the conservative legal defense organization Liberty Counsel filed suit against the city of Pensacola, Florida, because Light Ministries cofounders Marsha May and Thailyn Reed were denied permission to use the library meeting room there. “The highest form of free speech discrimination is to allow someone to address a subject matter but to restrict another person from addressing the same subject from a religious or political viewpoint,” Staver said April 9 in a prepared statement.
Posted April 30, 2001.