SAN FRANCISCO — A federal judge has ordered a Contra Costa County library to open its doors to a religious group.

County officials had barred the Faith Center Church Evangelistic Ministries from meeting in the library’s Antioch branch because they said the group violated the library’s ban on religious services in its meeting rooms.

The church filed suit in 2004, and U.S. District Judge Jeffrey White granted a preliminary injunction barring the library from enforcing the policy. But the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in 2006 overturned that decision, ruling that barring worship services from the library’s meeting rooms was “a permissible exclusion of a category of speech.”

After the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear the church’s appeal, the case returned to White, who ruled June 19 in Faith Center Church Evangelistic Ministries v. Glover that the policy resulted in excessive entanglement of government with religion.

White found that, although the 9th Circuit said certain forms of expression could be banned, the policy put library managers into an unconstitutional position of deciding what constitutes religious services when considering applications to use its meeting rooms, which are open to public use.

Groups such as the Sierra Club, Narcotics Anonymous and a production company conducting auditions for the television show “American Idol” were allowed to use the meeting rooms.

The San Jose Mercury News put it this way: "The county, White wrote, cannot figure out how to enforce the ban — how to distinguish worship from speech with a religious viewpoint — without excessively delving into religion."

White’s order will take effect July 6.