Yale Law School will no longer offer financial aid to students who work at public interest groups with a traditional Christian view of marriage.
The law school announced the change in policy on March 25 by email, citing an extension in its “nondiscrimination” policy to cover summer public interest fellowships, postgraduate public interest fellowships, and loan forgiveness for public interest careers, according to The Federalist. In light of the policy extension, the law school will not pay stipends to students who work at organizations that are perceived to discriminate on the basis of “sexual orientation and gender identity and expression.”
Because nonprofit legal organizations are often unable to pay their tuition-burdened interns well, law schools typically provide stipends to students who work at these organizations as a way to encourage public service.
In support of its decision, the law school cited a unanimous recommendation from its Public Interest Committee. “The Law School cannot prohibit a student from working for an employer who discriminates, but that is not a reason why Yale Law School should bear any obligation to fund that work, particularly if that organization does not give equal employment opportunity to all of our students,” the committee’s recommendation read.
The law school initiated the policy change after demands from the Outlaws, an LBGT activist group on campus, to pull financial aid from students working at Christian public interest groups and clarify their admissions policies for students who support Christian views on sexuality and gender identity.
The decision comes one month after an attorney from Alliance Defending Freedom spoke on campus about the Masterpiece Cakeshop, LTD. v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission legal case, where a gay couple sued a Christian baker in Colorado for refusing to bake a cake for their wedding.
ADF is a Christian legal aid organization that litigates religious liberty cases in the United States and abroad. The organization successfully represented plaintiff Jack Phillips in Masterpiece Cakeshop before the Supreme Court.
This new policy means that the law school will pull financial aid from students who work at public interest groups which do not certify that they are in compliance with the law school’s nondiscrimination policies. This is likely to disproportionately affect students working at public interest groups such as ADF, which require employees to sign statements of faith in Christian teachings and focus on Christian causes, particularly in the areas of marriage, sexuality, and gender.
Notably, the decision does not affect groups such as the American Civil Liberties Union, which supports abortion and other liberal causes.
This controversy is not the only attention Yale has received in recent months: The Ivy League school continues to find itself in the national spotlight over its connection to a massive college admission cheating scandal involving more than half a dozen other elite universities.
Troy Worden is a recent graduate in English and philosophy from the University of California, Berkeley, where he was president of the Berkeley College Republicans in 2017.
