"LADSON, S.C. – An anti-religion group is celebrating its recent success in shutting down a elementary school fundraiser that would have food and money to a local church’s food pantry.
Dorchester District 2 officials in Ladson, South Carolina received a letter from The American Humanist Association shortly before Thanksgiving threatening litigation over the charitable works of students at Oakbrook Elementary School, who were raising money and food for Old Fort Baptist Church’s food pantry, The Post and Courier reports.
“The purpose of this letter is to advise you that such school-sponsored fundraising efforts – the proceeds of which go directly to an evangelical Christian Church – must immediately cease, and that our organization will pursue the matter through litigation in federal court if it does not,” Monica Miller, an attorney with the Appignani Humanist Legal Center in Washington, D.C., wrote in the letter.
David Niose, legal director of the Appignani Humanist Legal Center wrote in an email Thursday that district officials “agreed not to sponsor or endorse churches or religious institutions in the future.”
“We strongly support charitable giving, but the good intentions of fundraisers and food drives can be achieved in ways that do not favor any religion,” he wrote, according to the news site.
Students at Oakbrook were selling “Thank You Grams” and using the money to buy groceries for the church’s food pantry. The humanist group alleges the fundraiser violated the U.S. Constitution’s Establishment Clause, which “commands a separation of church and state,” according to Miller’s letter cited by The Summerville Journal Scene.
District attorney John Reagle responded to the threat of litigation by explaining that the fundraiser did not violate the Establishment Clause because “OES’s provision of canned food to the food pantry would not create any entanglement between the school and the religious affiliated food pantry,” but that the school will “refrain from endorsing, sponsoring, or fundraising for any church or religious institution, including fundraising for a church that contributes to, or operates, a food pantry,” the Journal Scene reports."