TEMPE, Ariz. — The Christian Legal Society at Arizona State University argued that giving gays and non-Christians membership would destroy the group’s religious purpose. But the university’s nondiscrimination policy forbids such exclusion. So the group sued for an exemption. An out-of-court settlement was reached in September, with Arizona State agreeing to recognize the organization — as long as it limited membership to all students, heterosexual and homosexual, who uphold its religious values on sexuality.
Similar battles are being waged across the country, pitting student groups’ constitutional right to religious freedom against public universities’ educational interest in teaching inclusiveness. A moment of legal truth may be approaching as three other state schools — Southern Illinois University, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the University of California’s Hastings College of Law — await decisions in federal courts. Legal scholars see the cases as a competition between the First Amendment’s guarantee of free exercise of religion and its requirement that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.”
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