NEWS RELEASE
February 28, 2008 – FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
CONTACT MEDIA RELATIONS:  (703-642-1070 x3506)

Florida State Student Senate Reverses Its Decision to Pull Funding from Christian Legal Society

Homosexual Rights Group Had Targeted CLS and Every Nation Campus Ministries for Defunding

Tallahassee, FL — Florida State University’s Student Senate voted to reinstate funding to the Christian Legal Society, which had been frozen last week following pressure from a homosexual rights activist group who claimed the Christian Legal Society and another Christian student group, Every Nation Campus Ministries, were “discriminatory.”

Center attorney Tim Tracey, who has been working with the students since learning of the funding freeze, sent a letter to University officials outlining CLS’ legal rights, then accompanied CLS student leaders to Wednesday night’s hearing and prepared a statement for students to present to the Senate.   The statement clarified the reality that CLS requiring that its members and officers agree with its core values and be followers of Christ is no more discriminatory than the Sierra Club, whose mission is to “enjoy, explore and protect the planet,” denying membership or a leadership position to an avid strip mining advocate.

“Last night was a victory for religious freedom,” said Gregory S. Baylor, Director of Christian Legal Society’s Center for Law & Religious Freedom.  “FSU recognized what a lot a schools haven’t – that it is simply not wrong for religious student groups to organize around shared religious commitments.”

CLS chapters are facing challenges throughout the country.  Challenges to university actions to derecognize CLS chapters at the University of California’s Hastings College of Law and the University of Montana School of Law are currently pending, respectively, at the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals and the U.S. District Court for the District of Montana.

The Christian Legal Society, founded in 1961, is the nation’s premier membership organization of Christian attorneys, judges, law professors and law students.  The Center for Law & Religious Freedom, founded in 1975, is the advocacy division of CLS.

The full text of the letter sent to University Officials

The full text of the students’ statement before the Student Senate

To read more about this case:

http://www.tallahassee.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080217/NEWS01/802170312/1010

http://www.tallahassee.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080215/BREAKINGNEWS/80214056

###