A federal judge has ruled that New York City must allow religious groups to rent space for their meetings in public schools after classes and on weekends, vindicating a decade-long struggle by an evangelical Christian church in the Bronx to hold its Sunday services in a city school.
The decision, handed down late Wednesday by Judge Loretta A. Preska of Federal District Court in Manhattan, made permanent a preliminary order that she had issued in July 2002. It allows the church, the Bronx Household of Faith, to meet for worship for four hours at midday every Sunday at Public School 15, on Andrews Avenue in the Bronx.
Judge Preska's new ruling is virtually the opposite of one she wrote in the same case in 1996, when she agreed with the school board's decision to bar the group from meeting in a public school building for "religious worship." Judge Preska has now brought the case into line with a...