CENTER FOR LAW & RELIGIOUS FREEDOM SUES PENN STATE UNIVERSITY FOR
REFUSING TO RECOGNIZE CHRISTIAN STUDENT CLUB
UNIVERSITY PARK,
PA - The Center for Law & Religious Freedom filed suit today against Penn
State University on behalf of a Christian student club that has been denied
status as a recognized student organization because the University says it
already has “too many” Christian clubs.
DiscipleMakers
Christian Fellowship applied for registered status on the Penn State campus in
April 2004. The Penn State official who approves religious student
organizations, however, refused to approve the recognition because she said
there were “too many [Christian] groups anyway and they were beginning to
compete.” Penn State currently recognizes over 600 different student clubs,
ranging from the American Helicopter Society to Young Americans for Freedom.
Penn State
only requires religious student organizations, unlike secular school clubs, to
undergo a separate review process whereby a University administrator, the
Director of the Center for Ethics and Religious Affairs, decides whether or not
the club is sufficiently “unique” from existing religious student clubs to
warrant registration. Penn State officials insist that the group does not meet
the University’s “uniqueness requirement,” despite DiscipleMakers’ efforts to
show how it differed from other student organizations. An approved club gains
privileges including access to meeting rooms, bulletin boards and student
organization funding.
The lawsuit,
filed in federal court in Harrisburg, alleges that Penn State is violating the
First and Fourteenth Amendment rights of free speech, due process, free
association, and free exercise of religion of DiscipleMakers and similar
religious student organizations. The lawsuit also states that Penn State’s
“uniqueness requirement,” which is used to deprive Christian student clubs of
the status and benefits of an approved club, is unconstitutional.
“Penn State
University is on constitutional quicksand when it tasks a lone college
administrator with the responsibility to decide whether one group of Christians
has a different message from another,” said Center Director Gregory S. Baylor.
“The First Amendment ensures that citizens, not government bureaucrats, have
the right to make decisions about what they want to say and with whom they want
to say it. Penn State’s ‘uniqueness’ requirement is only another form of
discrimination against religious views the University wishes to discourage,”
Baylor said.
Christian Legal Society, a 42 year-old nationwide association
of Christian attorneys, law students, law professors, and judges,
established the Center for Law and Religious Freedom in 1975. The
Center is among the most respected voices in the religious liberty
arena.
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