A New York City-based Jewish university is asking the Supreme Court to block a lower court order requiring the school to recognize an LGBT student club, citing religious freedoms under the First Amendment.
Yeshiva University, a college established in 1886 that is considered one of the oldest Jewish universities in the nation, filed an emergency request on Monday calling a judge’s June decision in the New York Supreme Court First Judicial District an “unprecedented intrusion” into the university’s sincere religious beliefs.
The dispute surrounds a club at the university called the “Pride Alliance,” members of which are demanding that the university recognize the club on campus following the June lower court ruling, which would force Yeshiva to approve the club and its activities that are inconsistent with the school’s Torah-based values, according to the recent court filings.
NEW YORK JUDGE SAYS JEWISH UNIVERSITY ISN’T RELIGIOUS AND MUST APPROVE LGBT CLUB
“When secular authorities try to tell Yeshiva University that it is not religious, you know something has gone terribly wrong,” said Eric Baxter, vice president and senior counsel at the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, which is representing Yeshiva. “The First Amendment protects Yeshiva’s right to practice its faith. We are asking the Supreme Court to correct this obvious error.”
The university’s counsel also argues Yeshiva “welcomes and provides support services to its LGBTQ students” and that it bans anti-LGBT discrimination and bullying.
“If Yeshiva is forced to comply, the infringement of its religious liberty, and injury to its reputation as a bastion of Torah values and flagship Jewish university, will be irreparable,” Baxter wrote in the emergency application.
Attorneys for the school are seeking a stay order to maintain the status quo of the school’s position while the matter continues in court.
The legal dispute dates back to 2021, when a small group of alumni and students sued the school, alleging it was not a religious institution and demanding a court order to accept the club on campus while a lawsuit played out.
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Judge Lynn Kotler ruled in June that Yeshiva does not qualify as a “religious corporation” and must therefore approve the creation of an LGBT club under the city’s anti-discrimination law.
“The record shows that the purpose students attend Yeshiva is to obtain an education, not for religious worship or some other function which is religious at its core,” Kotler wrote in court documents. “Thus, religion is necessarily secondary to education at Yeshiva.”
