The ruling by U.S. District Judge Loretta Preska was the latest development in a 17-year legal battle. It came just as the city was beginning to enforce a New York City Board of Education policy that requires no permit be granted “for the purpose of holding religious worship services, or otherwise using a school as a house of worship,” though it does allow community groups, even religious ones, to use its buildings.
Judge Preska said the Bronx Household of Faith was likely to win its latest challenge to the city regulation on the grounds that the ban violates the First Amendment assurance that Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof. She also said the church had demonstrated it would suffer irreparable harm if it could not continue to use Public School 15 for Sunday morning worship services.
Jonathan Pines, a city attorney, said the city will seek an immediate appeal.
OHIO
Couple get eight years for son’s death from cancer
CLEVELAND | The parents of an 8-year-old boy who died from Hodgkin lymphoma after suffering for months from undiagnosed swollen glands was sentenced to eight years in prison Thursday after pleading guilty to denying him medical treatment.
Attorneys for Monica Hussing, 37, and William Robinson Sr., 40, had said the parents had financial problems and tried to get checkups for their son but couldn’t afford it.
The couple was given the maximum sentence by Cuyahoga County Judge Michael Astrab, who accepted their guilty plea last month to attempted involuntary manslaughter in a last-minute plea deal before their trial was about to begin. They were handcuffed and taken into custody immediately. Both plan to appeal the sentence.
Willie Robinson collapsed at his home on March 22, 2008. Prosecutors say he had begged his parents to take him to see a doctor but was rejected. Hodgkin lymphoma is a highly treatable cancer.
MASSACHUSETTS
Salvadoran charged in deaths of priests denies perjury
BOSTON | A former Salvadoran military officer accused of colluding in the 1989 slayings of six Jesuit priests pleaded not guilty Thursday to charges of fraud and perjury for allegedly lying on U.S. immigration forms.
Inocente Orlando Montano, 69, was arraigned in U.S. District Court on eight charges related to the alleged immigration fraud.
Mr. Montano has lived near Boston for about a decade. He was among 20 Salvadorans separately indicted in Spain last year in the slayings during El Salvador’s 12-year civil war.
Mr. Montano was arrested on the immigration charges last year. He signed a plea agreement with prosecutors but later informed the court that he would not plead guilty.
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