A federal judge has ruled that a Michigan school discriminated against a Christian campus group that requires its leaders to be Christians.
Judge Robert Cleland found that Wayne State University, a state school in Detroit, treated the campus’s chapter of the InterVarsity Christian Fellowship unfairly when it suspended the group in 2017 for mandating that leaders must profess Christianity.
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The school had justified its action as an enforcement of its nondiscrimination policy. But Cleland wrote that it had violated the First Amendment’s establishment clause, as well as InterVarsity’s “rights to internal management, free speech, freedom of association, freedom of assembly, and free exercise.”
The school reinstated InterVarsity’s charter in 2018 after an internal squabble. In a statement following Cleland’s ruling, Matt Lockwood, the school’s associate vice president of communications, called the lawsuit “unnecessary.” Attorneys for InterVarsity, on the other hand, celebrated the ruling as a win for free speech on campus.
“The law is crystal clear: Universities can’t kick religious student groups off campus just because they choose leaders who share their faith,” said Lori Windham, senior counsel at the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, the First Amendment legal group representing InterVarsity.
The dispute arose in 2017 when InterVarsity submitted its constitution to school administrators for approval. The constitution’s language included sections similar to InterVarsity rules on other Michigan campuses, but according to school, requiring group leaders to be Christian could potentially discriminate against other religious groups. When the group pushed back, the school revoked its student organization status.
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In its suit, InterVarsity alleged that its loss of status led to a greater loss of benefits afforded to other student organizations. It also pointed out that other student faith organizations, including Muslim and Coptic Christian groups, were not required to change their rules to allow nonmembers of their faiths into leadership.
Cleland agreed with these arguments, writing that school administrators “explicitly crafted their nondiscrimination policy to limit application to certain groups and categories while providing exceptions for others.”
