This time, the Bronx Household of Faith prevailed.

In the latest round of a drawn-out legal fight between the University Heights-based church and the city’s Department of Education, a judge ruled that Bronx Household of Faith — and some 60 other churches and religious groups citywide — can continue worshiping inside public school buildings during off hours.

The Alliance Defense Fund, which has represented Bronx Household in its fight with the DOE since 1995, hailed the ruling as a victory for churches and the communities they serve.

“Churches that have been helping communities for years can continue to offer the hope that empty buildings can’t,” said Jordan Lorence, the ADF lawyer who argued the case, after the ruling.

City lawyers representing the DOE said it would appeal the ruling and that it was a blow to the city’s efforts to avoid the appearance of endorsing a certain religion.

“The Department of Education intends to appeal to the Second Circuit Court of Appeals immediately given the Department’s legitimate concerns about appearing to endorse religion by permitting religious worship in school buildings,” said Jonathan Pines, the deputy chief of the city law department’s litigation division, in a statement.

Since Bronx Household first challenged the DOE’s policy against allowing churches to worship inside school buildings after hours, the two sides have traded victories.

Since 1995, lawyers for Bronx Household have fought a city rule that excludes churches and other religious groups from worshiping inside schools, saying they should be treated like any other organization that rents space from the Department of Education.

In 2002, after a judge issued a permanent injunction against the DOE’s regulation against worshiping, Bronx Household began using Public School 15 on Andrews Avenue for services. Last summer, however, in a split decision, an appeals court lifted the injunction, saying the DOE’s regulation rightfully protected the separation of church and state.

An appeal of that decision by Bronx Household went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, but it declined to hear the case in December, essentially upholding the lower courts ruling in favor of the DOE. It left Bronx Household and other churches scrambling to find new places to worship.

But another appeal by the Alliance Defense Fund, found a sympathetic listener in U.S. District Court Judge Loretta Preska, who issued a temporary restraining order on the city’s policy earlier this year. On Friday, Preska issued a permanent injunction of the policy, meaning Bronx Household and some 60 other religious groups and churches, will be allowed to continue worshiping in city schools.

Preska ruled that the DOE’s policy violated the Free Exercise Clause and Establishment Clause in the Constitution.

“There is no reason to exclude worship services from these empty school buildings, especially when school allows all other community groups to meet,” Lorence said. “Why exclude chuches that are helping their neighbors in so many significant ways?”

The DOE’s lawyers disagreed strongly with Preska’s decision.

Pines said Preska “virtually ignores a Second Circuit appeals court decision, issued one year ago, rejecting the plaintiffs’ Free Speech claims.”

He added that last summer’s decision “found that religious organizations had come to ‘dominate’ the public schools where they worshipped, and that the Department of Education had a substantial interest in avoiding the appearance of governmental endorsement of religion.”

Bronx Household is in the processing of constructing its own church across the street from PS 15, but has vowed to continue the fight on principle.

Editor’s note: A version of this article was published in the July 12-25 print edition of the Norwood News.