The common and constitutionally protected practice of allowing religious and community groups to rent vacant public buildings for their meetings is under attack in Hawaii’s courts. And what those courts decide could impact similar groups renting public buildings in the other 49 states.

Two atheists have sued a number of churches on Oahu that rent vacant public schools for their worship services, claiming the churches have defrauded the state government by exceeding the terms of the rental contracts.

Alliance Defending Freedom is defending two of these churches, and challenging the legitimacy of these lawsuits under the state False Claims Act.

The Hawaii Intermediate Court of Appeals will hear the churches’ appeal on Friday.

The federal government enacted the original False Claims Act during the Civil War to combat widespread fraud by government contractors who were submitting faulty goods and inflated invoices for payment. States in time passed similar laws, allowing private individuals to sue, on behalf of the government, those whom they claim have defrauded the government. If successful, the guilty can be required to pay triple damages and other financial penalties.

Twisting this law for their own purposes, the atheists in Hawaii have combed through their school district’s equal access policies and contracts with churches, hunting for “fraud.” Here’s a sample of what they found: an Oahu school principal interprets the equal access policy to mean a church is charged only for the time it actually meets and uses the facilities — not the time needed to set up and take down sound equipment, etc. So the principal allows the church to enter the building an hour before the meeting and stay an hour later.

To the atheists, this means the church is “defrauding” the government out of two hours of rental income per weekly meeting. Adding together years of weekly meetings, and multiplying for damages and other penalties, the atheists are demanding millions of dollars from the churches.

Of course, the effect of this lawsuit is to intimidate churches into leaving public schools. If the lawsuit succeeds, thousands of churches could soon be evicted from public schools all over the country.

The implications are not just financial: the people in these churches are part of the local community, working through their churches to serve their neighbors and make their lives better. These baseless legal attacks destroy that beneficial dynamic.

For years, One Love Ministries has rented a local high school on Sundays for its worship services. During that time, the church has mentored high school students, worked weekly to remove graffiti, provided landscaping, painted and installed a new floor in the auditorium, rewired the audio-visual system, helped the school recruit quality substitute teachers, donated supplies to the teaching staff, and even given the school an archery range.

That kind of generosity is common among the churches being sued. The congregations atheists are charging with fraud have actually been building better communities throughout the islands.

This baseless lawsuit represents a grave threat to religious liberty and freedom of speech for all groups. Most states have false claims statutes, so a disgruntled person could file a lawsuit against any church, synagogue, or mosque meeting in a public school or city community center. Or any other group, for that matter: after-school tutoring programs, the Girls Scouts, labor unions, even the organizers of a piano recital — all could be sued for “fraud” against the government under this innovative misuse of the state’s False Claims Act.

Hawaii’s people should not suffer from this twisted misuse of their state law, and this effort to punish churches local and nationwide for meeting in public buildings.

Jordan Lorence is senior counsel for Alliance Defending Freedom, which represents One Love Ministries.