A federal magistrate recommended Tuesday the cessation of the Huntington County Community Schools’ religious education program.

The ruling came about two weeks after a hearing in the case of H.S. vs. the Huntington County Community Schools over the district’s religious release-time education program.

The “By the Book Weekday Religious Instruction” program uses modular trailers plugged into city utilities but parked on the property of Horace Mann Elementary School. It is run by Associated Churches of Huntington.

The lawsuit, filed by the American Civil Liberties Union on behalf of a parent identified only by her initials, seeks to shut down the program, alleging it violates the establishment clause of the U.S. Constitution by allowing religious instruction on school property.

On Jan. 21, the case went before U.S. District Magistrate Roger B. Cosbey for a hearing on whether the program should be temporarily shut down in its current incarnation.

School officials sought the dismissal of the lawsuit, a request Cosbey denied.

In his recommendation, Cosbey wrote that the school district faces minimal harm if the preliminary injunction is granted, while the plaintiff faced irreparable harm with continued violation of her First Amendment rights.

Any inconvenience caused to Associated Churches of Huntington County by the preliminary injunction does not outweigh any harm caused by the constitutional violation, Cosbey wrote in his ruling.

He wrote that the case seemed to be about one ultimate question: whether “religious instruction to elementary students on public school property during the school day, in a church-owned mobile classroom (is a violation) of the Establishment Clause.”

Cosbey found that it was, saying that the use of tax-supported property and the tax-supported public school system to aid religious groups to spread their faiths made the program unconstitutional.

The school system has 10 days to file written objections to Cosbey’s recommendation. If it files a written objection, the plaintiff then has an additional 10 days to respond to those documents.

In a written statement issued Tuesday, school officials said District Senior Judge James Moody, who is in the Hammond Division of U.S. District Court for northern Indiana, will make a ruling after those two deadlines have passed.

School officials declined to comment on pending litigation.

rgreen@jg.net