The name of the organization tells it plainly: Freedom From Religion Foundation. The Wisconsin-based group wants a U.S. district court to rule against any public funding of the Dakota Boys and Girls Ranch. The legal complaint further demands that public agencies not refer troubled young people to the program as long as religion plays any part in the treatment.

To excise the spiritual component might be intolerable to the groups that run the program as an expression of their Christian religious faith. They are units of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America and the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod.

The foundation of "freethinkers" - read atheists and agnostics - might have a good case, but courts are decidedly erratic on church-state matters. It's alleged that "children are committed to the Dakota Boys and Girls Ranch, without their consent, by county social service agencies or the (state)Department of Juvenile Services and/or the (state) Department of Human Services, and all the children receive religious inculcation, including those who are committed by public agencies."

The atheist foundation might have its strongest argument on a constitutional basis if it's true that "children are disciplined for refusing to participate in the spiritual aspects of their therapeutic treatment plan, including suspension of privileges; prolongation of commitment (to the program). … Refusal to participate in religious activities is considered nonparticipation in a child's treatment plan."

It should be questioned whether the named plaintiffs, including five individual North Dakota residents, have the best interests at heart of youths who have emotional problems or have delinquency or substance addictions. Perhaps, it's more a matter of the Freedom From Religion Foundation's 33-year history of combatting, mainly in court, the role of religion in public life. It's won some, lost some cases. One of its signal losses was a challenge to the Bush administration's funding of work done by faith-based organizations. The foundation lost Hein v. Freedom From Religion Foundation in the Supreme Court.

The Boys and Girls Ranch asserts that no one getting treatment is coerced into Christian faith activities, that provision is made for residents to engage in non-Christian spiritual activities off premises. It also contends that it keeps separate accounting of private funds used for spiritual activities and the state money used for treatment.

The parties bringing the complaint don't attack the effectiveness of the therapeutic program. That's smart, because the latest recertification by the Commission on Accreditation of Rehabilitation Facilities is lavish with praise. The most bothersome aspect of the lawsuit is that its goal is entirely negative, to get practices to stop. The foundation proposes nothing positive in place of the way Dakota Boys and Girls Ranch is run.

The legal case illustrates a deep division in American society that has existed for more than two centuries.

People of equally good character can differ radically on whether a freedom from religion philosophy that nearly deifies an extra-constitutional concept, separation of church and state, can coexist respectfully with a right to freedom of religion.

The ranch program does good things. But if it coerces minors into faith who are not voluntary participants, it's in the wrong.