HAMILTON COUNTY, Indiana, March 4, 2010 (LifeSiteNews.com) – The Indiana Civil Rights Commission (ICRC) is facing a lawsuit alleging the agency has unconstitutionally stepped beyond the scope of its authority by claiming it had the power to review and penalize a Catholic home schooling group of nine families on civil rights charges.
The Chicago-based Thomas More Society, a national public interest law firm, filed a 127-page lawsuit claiming that the ICRC has arrogated to itself virtually unlimited authority to second guess and then penalize trivial decisions by such small groups of private citizens and families.
The case revolves around nine Catholic families who formed the Fishers Adolescent Catholic Enrichment Society (FACES). FACES is a social network where the children of the families can interact with other homeschooled children in a religious context.
FACES' litigation arose when one mother, whose daughter allegedly suffered from a serious food allergy, insisted that her child have a special diet at the group's banquet. The lawsuit claims that FACES' leaders believed in good faith that a different home-prepared meal would pose less risk to the girl's health.
However the mother circumvented the leaders' decision, then filed a civil rights charge with the ICRC, claiming “disability discrimination” because of FACES' alleged failure to accommodate her daughter's allergy problem. What began as a fight over food escalated even further when she filed an additional charge of “retaliation” on the part of FACES’ leaders.
The civil rights commission contends that its jurisdiction applies to matters “related to education” under Indiana's Civil Rights Law, but the Thomas More Society argues that provision never intended the agency to insert itself in the minor disputes and squabbles of small private associations.
“Fights over car pools or crayons are not within the purview of Indiana's Civil Rights Law or subject to ICRC oversight or sanctions,” said Thomas Brejcha, president and chief counsel of the Thomas More Society, “for that would be absurd and the law abhors absurd interpretations.”
“The agency seems to claim that the scope of its jurisdiction is boundless. It is acting like a lawless giant wielding a sledgehammer on vulnerable private citizens, who were only striving to provide safe, enriching social occasions for their children.”
The suit explains how hard ICRC’s decision has hit this small voluntary association, which subsists only on donations and volunteer efforts, has no employees, and offers no goods, services, or accommodations to the general public. It states that FACES' small treasury has been exhausted; it has discontinued social activities pending the outcome of the litigation; and it will be forced to disband if the case proceeds much further.
The lawsuit charges that the ICRC's assertion of jurisdiction in the case imposes an unconstitutionally intolerable burden on the families’ federal First Amendment rights and their corresponding rights under the Indiana Constitution to freely associate in exercising and expressing their religious beliefs.
It further alleges that allowing the ICRC’s rulings to create a precedent would have a chilling effect on small homeschooling associations throughout Indiana, many of whose members now fear liability as the price of volunteer efforts, if any disgruntled parent should file a new charge with ICRC.
“That secular government officials stand in judgment over this private religious group's good faith decisions as to whether one accommodation of a child's health problem would be more 'reasonable' than another, when the group's leaders measure their own conduct according to a religious ideal, constitutes a grave insult to the very concept of religious freedom,” Brejcha said.