Category: News

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Find SHoWLE on Discord

Starting today you can find a SHoWLE com­mu­ni­ty serv­er on the Discord plat­form. Participation is free and open to any­one who wants to par­tic­i­pate but it does require an invi­ta­tion.

You need to cre­ate an account on Discord. You will need to install the Discord app or use the brows­er ver­sion to access the group.

The good news the invites are free. A lim­it­ed time one is with this post. If it is expired feel free to reach out to us and ask for an invite. If you are a mem­ber of SHoWLE you get a spe­cial invite and get a spe­cial role on the serv­er.

This is just anoth­er social media plat­form to have some dis­cus­sions and fun out­side for­mal meet­ings. It is mod­er­at­ed and there are some rules for the group.

https://discord.gg/PTJTP8b6 (this link will expire after April 4, 2024. Just reach out to us for anoth­er if it is expired or check the social media links menu.

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Judge Rules Against Catholic Families in Sylvania Bus Dispute

Images of Sylvania school bus

On Tuesday 3/19, Lucas coun­ty Judge Stacy Cook ruled that the Sylvania City School District bus trans­porta­tion plan for stu­dents of non-public schools does­n’t vio­late Ohio law or con­sti­tu­tion.

Back in 2022, a cou­ple of fam­i­lies that send their chil­dren to a catholic school in Sylvania, filed a law­suit because their chil­dren had to be picked up hours before their school start­ed, trans­port­ed with old­er stu­dents, then dropped off at a high school to trans­fer to anoth­er bus, to arrive at their catholic school. The par­ents thought it was unlaw­ful and vio­lat­ed the equal pro­tec­tion and reli­gious free­dom claus­es of the Ohio con­sti­tu­tion.

From the rul­ing:

“The evi­dence sub­mit­ted by plain­tiffs con­sist of sev­er­al affi­davits by the par­ties and a non­par­ty spouse. These affi­davits recite that they choose Catholic edu­ca­tion because of their per­son­al Catholic faith. The affi­davits also recite the var­i­ous incon­ve­niences the Plaintiffs and their chil­dren face because of the District’s trans­porta­tion scheme. However, the Court finds that Plaintiffs have offered no evi­dence of any coer­cive effects on their reli­gious prac­tice: there is no evi­dence that the trans­porta­tion plan has com­pelled Plaintiffs to do any­thing for­bid­den by their reli­gion or that it has caused them to refrain from doing some­thing required by their reli­gion. Plaintiffs have also not offered any evi­dence that the trans­porta­tion plan has com­pelled them to affirm or dis­avow a belief for­bid­den or required by their reli­gion. Accordingly, the Court finds that Plaintiffs have failed to demon­strate any coer­cive effect upon their reli­gious prac­tice. The Plaintiffs have there­fore failed to show that Defendants’ trans­porta­tion plan vio­lates their right to free exer­cise of reli­gion under the Ohio Constitution.

The Court finds against Plaintiffs as to their claim that Defendants’ trans­porta­tion plan vio­lates their right to free exer­cise of reli­gion under the Ohio Constitution. Again, the pre­sump­tion that a leg­isla­tive act is con­sti­tu­tion­al applies to the Board’s trans­porta­tion plan. With this pre­sump­tion the Court finds in favor of Defendants as to Plaintiffs’ free exer­cise claim.”

JENNIFER A SWIECH, et. al., v. BOARD OF EDUCATION OF THE SYLVANIA CITY SCHOOL DIST., et. al.,

Both par­ties had asked for a sum­ma­ry judge­ment since the facts in the case weren’t in dis­pute. In the orig­i­nal law­suit the fam­i­lies asked the court for an injunc­tion to order the school dis­trict to “fix” the trans­porta­tion plan. Judge Cook said the court could­n’t do that, it could only rule if the dis­tric­t’s act was law­ful and not uncon­sti­tu­tion­al.

The orig­i­nal law­suit was dis­missed by the par­ents on August 30, 2022. Parents refiled on September 16, 2022 and asked for class action sta­tus and removed all ref­er­ences to the 1st amend­ment to keep it out of Federal court. The class action was nev­er cer­ti­fied.

A lawyer for the fam­i­lies, who was one of the plain­tiffs when the law­suit had been filed in August 2022 but dropped out in September of 2022, stat­ed they were prob­a­bly going to appeal the rul­ing.

Additional infor­ma­tion on this sto­ry is in the Toledo Blade behind a pay­wall. Images of the arti­cle is below.

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New Membership Level Added

During our mem­bers meet­ing, I was asked about a Student rate for mem­ber­ship. I said at the time we did­n’t have a for­mal stu­dent lev­el but we would nev­er turn away a poten­tial mem­ber who could­n’t afford the cur­rent full mem­ber­ship dues.

Today I announce we now have a Student/Fixed Income mem­ber­ship lev­el. On the Join page, scroll down for the link then when you get tak­en to the sign-up page one of the lev­els avail­able at the bot­tom is for Students and those on fixed incomes.

People won’t need to ask for the spe­cial rate and will be able to select it when they sign up.

The change needs to be con­firmed by the Board so assume that lev­el has all the same ben­e­fits of the full price. If the low­er amount is still too much we also accept vol­un­teer time and dona­tions in-kind (like shar­ing a skill or donat­ing an item you aren’t using).

– Doug

President of SHoWLE

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Humanists Respond To Proposed Laws

The Secular Humanists of Western Lake Erie has sub­mit­ted writ­ten tes­ti­mo­ny to the Ohio Senate Government Oversight and Reform Committee con­cern­ing two bills before the com­mit­tee. One would allow the leg­is­la­ture to over­ride exec­u­tive orders issued by the Governor and the sec­ond would add more reg­u­la­tions to peo­ple need­ing pub­lic assis­tance. SHoWLE oppos­es both bills.

Senate Bill 17

Makes sev­er­al changes to the SNAP (aka Food Stamps) and Medicaid pro­grams. It pro­hibits the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services from adapt­ing SNAP eli­gi­bil­i­ty rules for sit­u­a­tions like hav­ing a pan­dem­ic. It also changes SNAP to a report­ing sys­tem where the per­son get­ting the benifit would have to report ANY change in their income. For exam­ple, most peo­ple on SNAP work. They would have to report any extra shifts they pick up even if the income over­all would­n’t put them over a thresh­old.

Another bad change is requir­ing able body peo­ple on Medicaid to work at least 20 hours a week. A good num­ber of peo­ple on Medicaid work so this change would hurt those, while not dis­abled, still should­n’t be work­ing. There is also a ques­tion about if a work require­ment is allowed since the Biden Administration just recent­ly rescind­ed all waivers for the require­ment.

Click HERE if the embe­d­ed let­ter can’t be seen above

Senate Bill 22

This bill would allow the General Assembly to rescind any exec­u­tive order made by the Governor or any emer­gency order by any state agency such as pub­lic health orders deal­ing with a pan­dem­ic that come from the Ohio Department of Health.

Even if there was­n’t a con­sti­tu­tion­al ques­tion about this pro­posed law, SHoWLE believes that allow­ing the leg­is­la­ture to ignore sci­ence and med­ical experts to end pub­lic health orders is a dan­ger to all Ohioans. The leg­is­la­ture has under­mined the response to the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic that has killed at least 12,000 peo­ple in the state and almost half a mil­lion in the US. It is sim­ply wrong to politi­cize the lives and safe­ty of the cit­i­zens of Ohio.

SHoWLE believes Ohio would be in a much bet­ter posi­tion had the state con­tin­ued to do the right thing in address­ing the pan­dem­ic rather than giv­ing in to the self­ish and sci­ence deny­ing mem­bers of the leg­is­la­ture. SB 22 will make things much worse now and in the future.

Click HERE if the embe­d­ed let­ter can’t be seen above

SHoWLE will con­tin­ue to keep track of and respond to pub­lic laws and poli­cies that are of inter­est to the group or fits our mis­sion state­ment and pur­pose. Laws and poli­cies that not only effect church and state issues but also social jus­tice issues will be respond­ed to as well.

If you feel as we do about these two bills, we ask that you con­tact your state Senator and let them know how you feel about SB 17 and SB 22.

*Update* SB 22 passed the com­mit­tee and the Senate on 2/17. The bill now moves on to the House.

House Bill 90

A com­pan­ion to SB 22 was intro­duced in the Ohio House and is now in the State and Local Government Committee.

Here is the let­ter I sent to the com­mit­tee oppos­ing HB 90:

Click HERE if the embe­d­ed let­ter can’t be seen above

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We’ve Adopted A Family For The Holidays

This year SHoWLE has been giv­en a fam­i­ly to spon­sor for the hol­i­days through Lucas County Children’s Services. We will be help­ing out a 4 year old named DJ and his father Derrick.

If you would like to pur­chase a gift to donate just check out the needs and wants for the child and father and let Bev know what you plan to pur­chase so we can avoid dupli­ca­tion. (send her an email at bevzilla@yahoo.com)

Bev will also be host­ing a wrap par­ty at her house on Saturday December 12 at 1 PM to wrap the gifts in a social­ly dis­tant and safe man­ner. If you can donate wrap­ping paper or rib­bon that would be appre­ci­at­ed. Please con­tact Bev for more infor­ma­tion on the par­ty.

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Donate To Our Fall Fundraiser

For the month of August and September 2020, the Secular Humanists of Western Lake Erie will be hold­ing a Fall Fundraiser. Our goal is to raise $1000 that will be used to sup­port the oper­a­tion of the group and edu­cat­ing the pub­lic about the group and Humanism for the 2021 Fiscal Year.

If you donate at least $40, you will have a choice of one of these great gifts:

Continue read­ing “Donate To Our Fall Fundraiser”
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We Made A Mistake

Thanks to a mem­ber, we found out we had a mis­take in our trea­sury report­ing. It involved how we report­ed dona­tions com­ing from peo­ple using PayPal. No dona­tions were lost, only the sum­maries we cre­at­ed did­n’t record the dona­tions as dona­tions. Fiscal Year 2020 has been cor­rect­ed where the issue occurred and sum­maries that have been updat­ed are marked with “Corrected“on our Monthly Treasury Summary page. Fiscal Year 2019 will be checked this week­end and sum­maries will be cor­rect­ed if need­ed.

Continue read­ing “We Made A Mistake”