After School Satan Club Voted Down By PA School District

YORK COUNTY, PA — A Pennsylvania school board voted overwhelmingly to deny the formation of an After School Satan Club, and a national group of Satanists says legal action could soon be taken.

The Northern York County School District voted 8-1 to deny the club's formation Tuesday night, according to the York Daily Record.

Samantha Groome, whose children are in the district, proposed the club for Northern Elementary School, saying her children were missing out on after school activities due to a lack of secular options, according to PennLive.

The York Daily Record reports the district and several others in the county work with Joy El Christian, which offers students off-campus, faith-based activities during the school day.

The 8-1 vote caught the attention of the Satanic Temple, whose leader said legal action will likely be taken against the district.

"Unfortunately, we have to put up the funds for our own litigation to move forward to make sure that people understand the Constitution, understand what religious liberty actually means, where their authority ends and what's covered under the First Amendment," Satanic Temple Founder Lucien Greaves told the York Daily Record.

The Satanic Temple follows seven tenets. They are:

1. One should strive to act with compassion and empathy toward all creatures in accordance with reason.
2. The struggle for justice is an ongoing and necessary pursuit that should prevail over laws and institutions.
3. One’s body is inviolable, subject to one’s own will alone.
4. The freedoms of others should be respected, including the freedom to offend. To willfully and unjustly encroach upon the freedoms of another is to forgo one's own.
5. Beliefs should conform to one's best scientific understanding of the world. One should take care never to distort scientific facts to fit one's beliefs.
6. People are fallible. If one makes a mistake, one should do one's best to rectify it and resolve any harm that might have been caused.
7. Every tenet is a guiding principle designed to inspire nobility in action and thought. The spirit of compassion, wisdom, and justice should always prevail over the written or spoken word.