Maine School Board Asks Church What It Believes About Marriage, Abortion, Gender Before Denying Lease

A Maine church that outgrew its meeting space applied with the local school board to lease space at a high school for worship services, but the school board appeared to apply a religious test to the church and negotiations fell through. Now, the church is suing.

“Public institutions that seek to lease their facilities for revenue should not be able to discriminate based on religious or political conviction,” Mariah Gondeiro, vice president and legal counsel of Advocates for Faith & Freedom, the law firm representing the church, said in a press release exclusively provided first to The Daily Signal.

Gondeiro is representing The Pines Church in Bangor, Maine, which sued the Hermon School Committee Tuesday. The Pines Church aimed to move to Hermon, Maine, because many church members live there. Yet Hermon had no rental spaces available, and it appeared that meeting at the high school represented the best option.

According to the complaint, organizations seeking short-term leases must work with the principal of the school and complete a facilities request form—a form that does not include any questions about the organization’s beliefs.

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