An eastern Pennsylvania school district has reached a settlement with The Satanic Temple in a lawsuit alleging discrimination against students by barring one of the group's After School Satan clubs from using a school building.

The American Civil Liberties Union said Thursday that the Saucon Valley School District had agreed to pay $200,000 in attorney’s fees and to provide The Satanic Temple and the After School Satan Club it sponsors the same access to school facilities as is provided to other organizations.

The ACLU filed the lawsuit in March after the district rescinded its earlier approval to allow the club to meet following criticism. The After School Satan Club, with the motto “Educatin’ with Satan,” had drawn protests and even a threat in February that prompted closure of district schools for a day and the later arrest of a person in another state.

Saucon Valley school district attorney Mark Fitzgerald told reporters in a statement that the district denies having discriminated against The Satanic Temple, its club or “the approximately four students” who attended its meetings. He said the district’s priorities were education and the safety of students and staff.

  • banneryear1868@lemmy.world
    410·
    8 months ago

    That’s the Church of Satan, the Satanic Temple and them deny the legitimacy of each other. The Church of Satan accepts all of Satan’s supposed ideology even the “bad” things, and the Satanic Temple was basically constructed as a “good” alternative/challenge to Christian political influence from a logical positivist perspective with individualism and neoliberal ideology commodified and branded with Satanic iconography. It’s all pretty stupid IMO, aside from the way they can mount legal challenges. The fact they need to exist to do this is absurd but it is what it is I guess.