In Pines Church v. Hermon School Department, (D ME, July 31, 2024), a Maine federal district court denied both parties' motions for summary judgment. Pines Church sought to enter a 12-month lease to use space at Hermon High School for Sunday religious services. The School Committee offered only a month-to-month lease. Plaintiffs claimed that the denial of a long-term lease was motivated by animus against their orthodox Christian religious beliefs. The court said in part:
Plaintiffs rely on the relatively blatant bias and the inferences that arise from the interrogatories posed by one Committee member who demanded to know from Pastor Gioia the Church’s “position” on a spate of religious, political, and cultural flashpoints before evaluating whether to extend a lease on behalf of a publicly funded school. Plaintiffs also rely on a somewhat more tepid bias, sanitized through fear-of-association comments by others, along the lines that association with the Church may not fit with the Committee’s “goals” and may therefore create a “negative image” by not comporting with the School Department’s “mission” and evidently its own beliefs. This evidence certainly is probative of Plaintiffs’ position that the School Committee’s refusal to offer Plaintiffs a lease was motivated by unconstitutional considerations, such as animus toward the Church’s orthodox religious beliefs. For its part, the School Department counters that the School Committee’s decision, save for the one Committee member’s bill of particulars put to the Pastor, simply resulted from humdrum, benign space and cost concerns, although that narrative is far from conclusive based on the summary judgment record. These competing characterizations of the Committee’s motivations form the most conspicuous reason I deny summary judgment to the parties in favor of a jury trial.
