Sheriff’s Dept. Graduation Site Challenged

Houston, for his part, said Thursday that his affiliation with Legacy Church — he was its security director for a couple of years — isn’t the reason the ceremony will be held there. A top county executive who isn’t a member of the church set it up, he said, and the venue is free.

In fact, Houston said, the Sheriff’s Department held at least one graduation ceremony at the church before he even took office. Albuquerque police have used it, too.

“I didn’t expect this” controversy, Houston said. “It caught me blindside to be honest.”

The ACLU said it received anonymous complaints from county employees concerned about the graduation site.

“The bottom line is that the graduation ceremony is signaling that Legacy Church is the religious perspective that Bernalillo County endorses,” Peter Simonson of the ACLU said in an interview. “That’s the over-arching message. Implicitly, that means Bernalillo County views other religions as not sufficiently legitimate for hosting their graduation ceremony.”

Courts have found that it’s unconstitutional, Simonson said, for public schools to hold graduation ceremonies in a church.

In a letter to Houston, the ACLU said the First Amendment prohibits government action to advance religion.

“Given the size of Albuquerque, the countless nonreligious venues where you could have held this graduation, and your membership in the Legacy Church, graduates would be hard-pressed to see this ceremony as anything but your, and the Sheriff’s Office’s, endorsement of religion in general and this Church’s doctrine in particular,” ACLU Managing Attorney Laura Schauer Ives said in the letter.

Jennifer Vega-Brown, the sheriff’s legal adviser and public information officer, disagreed with that analysis.

The department picked Legacy Church because it’s free and has plenty of parking, she said. Houston’s membership had no role in the decision, she added.

Vega-Brown, who is not a member of Legacy, said she visited the church and found the space looks more like an auditorium or concert venue than a church.

“You see more religious icons walking in Old Town that you do in that church,” she said.

Houston put it this way: “I think a lot of people could go in there and not realize they’re in a church facility.”

In any case, it would be impossible to find another venue on such short notice, Vega-Brown said.

Albuquerque police, meanwhile, have held cadet graduations at Legacy Church, the University of New Mexico and Hoffmantown Church in the last few years, mayoral spokesman Chris Ramirez said. But Mayor Richard Berry’s administration decided last year to start having the ceremonies at city-owned venues.

The last police graduation was at the Convention Center, and firefighters graduated at the KiMo Theatre, he said.

Steve Smothermon, Legacy’s senior pastor, said the church takes an active interest in helping first responders who “protect and serve” the community. Legacy has donated hundreds of thousands of dollars for Fire Department equipment, he said, and numerous graduations and other events have been held there.

“We don’t charge anything,” he said. “We do it as a service to the community.”

He said that “what the ACLU is doing is unconscionable,” especially given that the hosting of community events at the church is a longtime practice.

“I don’t think there’s anything in there that would be offensive to anybody,” he said.
— This article appeared on page A1 of the Albuquerque Journal