“I think the hearing went very well today,” Lorence stated. “We are cautiously optimistic that Judge Preska will issue a permanent injunction against this policy that New York City has and allow religious groups to be able to use public schools on the weekends and weeknights on the same terms and conditions as everybody else.”

A U.S. federal judge heard arguments Friday in an ongoing legal battle over whether churches should be allowed to hold weekend worship services in New York City’s public schools.

The Alliance Defense Fund, representing Bronx Household of Faith, argued against claims that letting churches worship at schools would amount to government endorsement of religion. Churches, the ADF contended, are not doing anything different from what student religious groups are already allowed to do.

“I think that Judge [Loretta] Preska is with us,” said Jordan Lorence, senior counsel of the Alliance Defense Fund, in an interview with The Christian Post after the hearing.

The ADF has been representing Bronx Household of Faith since 1995, after its application to rent a public school building for Sunday services was rejected. In February 2012, it won a court order allowing churches to temporarily continue meeting for weekend services in public schools. The city’s ban on worship services in vacant public school buildings, which has affected dozens of churches in the city, is unique in the nation.

During Friday’s hearing in Bronx Household of Faith v. Board of Education of the City of New York, which lasted close to two hours and took place at the U.S. Courthouse in New York, Jonathan Pines, the Department of Education’s attorney, argued that churches should not be allowed to use school space for worship because an outside observer would view such permission as the government lending its support toward a religion.

ADF’s Lorence argued, however, that schools already provide students the opportunity to engage in religious practice by allowing them to hold Bible discussion groups, where students can sing hymns, pray together, and engage in Christian discussion.

Distinguishing between church services and religious student group meetings, Pines contended that churches actively advertise their gatherings as “worship” services. He pointed to several Bronx churches seeking to hold services in schools that have marketed their meetings on their websites specifically as worship services. The DOE has an obligation to keep worship out of school, the attorney maintained.

Lorence, meanwhile, noted that the only distinction between the student and church meetings is specifically the use of the word “worship.”

The term is often part of church doctrine, the ADF attorney argued, and it is discriminatory to punish churches by not allowing them to use school space over the use of a word specific to their beliefs. Lorence also pointed out that nontheistic Eastern religions that do not use “worship” in their terminology are often given a pass on that same issue and allowed to use school space for their events.

Judge Preska acknowledged that outside observers walking by and seeing a church praying inside a school “would find it difficult to see government endorsement” of religion.

After the hearing, Lorence told CP that he is “cautiously optimistic” that the judge will rule in favor of the New York churches.

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