AUGUSTA, Maine — A federal judge denied Tuesday a Bangor church’s request for its affiliated schools to be exempt from Maine’s anti-discrimination laws when seeking public money.
Crosspoint Church of Bangor sued last year the Maine Human Rights Commission and Education Commissioner Pender Makin over its inability to accept public funds unless it follows the Maine Human Rights Act, which was amended by the Democratic-led Legislature in 2021 to require schools taking tuition from towns without high schools to accept and hire LGBTQ+ students and employees.
Crosspoint, previously known as Bangor Baptist Church, operates Bangor Christian Schools on outer Broadway and serves prekindergarten through 12th-grade students. Its schools won a landmark U.S. Supreme Court case in June 2022 that lifted Maine’s ban on public funding for religious schools. The Legislature’s earlier law sought to guard against such a ruling.
So the church filed a separate lawsuit in March 2023 arguing it should not need to follow the Maine Human Rights Act in order to receive public dollars, calling it “religious discrimination” and unconstitutional. An attorney for the church from First Liberty Institute, a Texas-based conservative law firm, argued Maine’s anti-discrimination rules impose “special burdens on religious schools in order to keep them out of the school choice program.”
But U.S. District Judge John Woodcock Jr. denied Crosspoint’s request for a preliminary injunction to block the Maine Human Rights Act from being enforced if it seeks public dollars. The church’s policies “plainly run afoul” of the anti-discrimination provisions, Woodcock wrote in a 47-page ruling.
The judge noted the case will likely get decided by the Boston-based 1st Circuit Court of Appeals but said Crosspoint is “unlikely to succeed on the merits.” Still, ACLU of Maine legal director Carol Garvan, whose group filed a brief supporting the state in the case, said the “next frontier is really an unsettled area of law.”
Woodcock noted Crosspoint’s affiliated schools operate under a “statement of faith” that says marriage is between one man and one woman and sexual activity, identity or expression outside of that are “sinful perversions” and unacceptable. The judge also pointed out the schools’ code of conduct bans students from “identifying as a gender other than their biological sex.”
Although the church and its schools won the case before the U.S. Supreme Court in 2022, Woodcock added the Legislature and Attorney General Aaron Frey “have largely deprived Crosspoint and similar religious schools of the fruit of their victory” by changing the law.
First Liberty senior counsel Lea Patterson, representing the Bangor church, said Tuesday they intend to appeal Woodcock’s decision to the federal appellate court.
“Government punishing religious schools for living out their religious beliefs is not only unconstitutional, it is wrong,” Patterson said.
Last year, Crosspoint said that 28 of the 92 students enrolled during the 2022-2023 school year at Bangor Christian High School lived in the tuitioning towns of Bradford, Glenburn, Levant, Orrington and Veazie. The church paid 95 percent of tuition for the eight children of Crosspoint and school employees to attend Bangor Christian last school year at a cost of more than $47,000.
Frey’s office, which has represented the state in the lawsuit, does not comment on pending litigation, spokesperson Danna Hayes said.
Violations of the Maine Human Rights Act, including by schools that receive public money and unlawfully discriminate against students and employees, carry penalties of up to $20,000 for a first offense, $50,000 for a second violation and $100,000 for subsequent violations.
