Monday, April 3, 2023
Scholars' Comment Opposing Rescission of Education Dept.'s Student-Religious-Group Protection
(I'm returning to post on the blog after a significant hiatus caused by a bunch of other commitments!)
The U.S. Department of Education has proposed to rescind a provision it adopted in the Trump Administration protecting student religious groups at public universities from being denied access to facilities and other benefits available to other student groups. For the notice-and-comment process, I took the lead in drafting a comment letter from a blue-ribbon group of scholars*/ opposing the rescission. The rescission would leave student religious groups protected under another (but more uncertain) regulation that applies to nonreligious groups as well. But we argue that the distinctive protection for religious groups is fully justified by the First Amendment. Summary quote:
The religious-group protection categorically prohibits a public IHE [institution of higher education] from denying a group access because of its sincerely held beliefs or practices, including leadership and membership criteria. But that categorical protection has strong support in First Amendment principles and current Supreme Court case law, for two major reasons. First, unconstitutional discrimination against religion comes in many different forms, and litigation has shown that almost any public IHE policy that denies a student religious group access discriminates in one of these ways. Second, the First Amendment also categorically guarantees religious organizations autonomy to set criteria for leadership and membership, and public IHE policies denying religious groups access regularly violate that guarantee.
*/ Doug Laycock, Michael McConnell, Rick Garnett, John Inazu, Michael Paulsen, Asma Uddin, and yours truly.
https://mirrorofjustice.blogs.com/mirrorofjustice/2023/04/scholars-comment-opposing-rescission-of-education-depts-student-religious-group-protection-.html