Hit by court ruling, San Jose schools recognize Christian sports club
Similar issues raised in fight over college rule from Trump administration
The San Jose (Calif.) Unified School District formally agreed last week to allow the Fellowship of Christian Athletes to organize clubs in its schools, ending a dispute that began in 2019 when one of its schools, Pioneer High School, suspended recognition of an FCA chapter by claiming that the club violated school nondiscrimination policies. Although the chapter allows any student to join, its leadership is restricted to students who agree to the FCA’s Statement of Faith and Sexual Purity Statement, which condemn sexual behavior outside of a heterosexual marriage.
The district and the FCA agreed to a settlement in response to a decision of the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which ruled 9-2 last September that the chapter should be recognized.
Meanwhile, a federal lawsuit raising similar issues over a Trump-era rule affecting college campuses continues to play out in the U.S. District Court for the District of Colombia.
The disputes pit two kinds of nondiscrimination goals against each other: On the one hand, school administrators in San Jose and some college campuses have claimed that giving formal recognition to clubs that prohibit LGTBQ leadership runs counter to the educational mission to treat all students equally. On the other hand, organizations that have religious beliefs prohibiting same-sex sexual behavior claim that they are being discriminated against if they are treated differently than secular clubs or clubs with different religious beliefs.
In the end, the San Francisco-based federal appeals court sided with the clubs in a ruling that received little attention at the time. Writing for the majority, Judge Consuelo M. Callahan, a Bush appointee, said in the majority opinion for Fellowship of Christian Athletes v. San Jose Unified School Board of Education:
While it cannot be overstated that anti-discrimination policies certainly serve worthy causes — particularly within the context of a school setting where students are often finding themselves — those policies may not themselves be utilized in a manner that transgresses or supersedes the government’s constitutional commitment to be steadfastly neutral to religion. Under the First Amendment’s protection of free exercise of religion and free speech, the government may not “single out” religious groups “for special disfavor” compared to similar secular groups. ...
The District, rather than treating FCA like comparable secular student groups whose membership was limited based on criteria including sex, race, ethnicity, and gender identity, penalized it based on its religious beliefs. Because the Constitution prohibits such a double standard — even in the absence of any motive to do so — we reverse the district court’s denial of FCA’s motion for a preliminary injunction.
According to court documents, clubs that were allowed to discriminate included the Senior Women club, which was open only to “seniors who identify as female”; the South Asian Heritage club, which was allowed to “prioritize” acceptance of south Asian students; and the Girls’ Circle, which limited its membership to “students who are female identifying.”
Similar issues at play in D.C. lawsuit
The federal case with a similar dispute over nondiscrimination goals is Secular Student Alliance v. U.S. Department of Education, which was filed on Jan. 19, 2021, the last complete day of the Trump administration. The suit seeks to invalidate a rule implemented by the Department of Education under the direction of Trump appointee Betsy DeVos that requires public colleges and universities to exempt religious clubs from certain nondiscrimination requirements.
The department under the Biden administration has proposed repealing the rule, which could make the Secular Student Alliance’s lawsuit moot, but has not done so.
In its lawsuit, the alliance said that DeVos did not have authority to make the rule. Because of the rule, the lawsuit claims, “many public colleges and universities must now scrap the nondiscrimination requirements that they put in place to protect all students. These schools now have no real choice but to recognize and fund religious student organizations that discriminate — with disastrous results for students from groups that have historically been victims of invidious discrimination.”
The latest development in the case is that a Christian apologetics organization, Ratio Christi, filed a friend-of-the-court brief last Friday supporting the rule. Although the group mostly raised technical issues with the lawsuit, it also pointed out that the rule was implemented to “help protect the right to free exercise of religion for both institutions and students.”