This case was filed by the American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts on May 16, 2005 in the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts against the Department of Health and Human Services. The plaintiff claimed that the department's provision of more than a million dollars of public funds to a ministry called "The Silver Ring Thing" (SRT) that uses federal abstinence education funding to bring "unchurched" students to Jesus Christ constituted an unlawful establishment of religion and a governmental endorsement and preference for religion in general and specific tenets of the ministry in particular.

The ministry developed a three hour presentation that was meant to occur directly following a mandatory abstinence education assembly in public schools and which, according to the plaintiff, was "permeated with religion."

In a two-year settlement agreement entered on February 22, 2006, the defendants acknowleged that they had terminated the SRT grant effective January 31, 2006. The agreement provided that defendants would not fund SRT's abstinence eduction as it had been structured and implemented during the fiscal year 2005, that strict requirements would be made before considering funding any future proposals from SRT, and that extensive monitoring of SRT's activities would occur if SRT was given a grant.

Denise Heberle - 08/07/2012


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