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Supreme Court Backs Yeshiva University In Case Regarding LGBTQ Group

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OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author's opinion.


The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled in favor of Yeshiva University in a case that involves an LGBTQ group on campus.

Earlier, a New York judge ruled that the university had to recognize the organization, but liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor on Friday ordered that ruling temporarily blocked to allow the institution’s religious freedom case to wrap up.

Sotomayor signed off on the ruling because she is the circuit justice overseeing the Second District, which includes the state of New York. The Daily Wire reported that there were no dissents.

“Yeshiva shouldn’t have been forced to go all the way to the Supreme Court to receive such a commonsense ruling in favor of its First Amendment rights,” Eric Baxter, vice president and senior counsel of the Becket law firm, noted in a statement to The Daily Wire after Sotomayor’s ruling.

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“We are grateful that Justice Sotomayor stepped in to protect Yeshiva’s religious liberty in this case,” he noted further.

Becket bills itself as “a non-profit, non-partisan, law firm that protects the free expression of all religious traditions.”

The Daily Wire adds:

Yeshiva University has been fighting to defend its religious identity in New York courts for more than a year. In YU Pride Alliance v. Yeshiva University, New York lower courts agreed with the plaintiffs to force Yeshiva to recognize an LGBTQ club on campus, even though this would violate Torah values that Yeshiva follows.

The emergency order from Sotomayor will allow the school to deny recognition to the group for now, though it may not be the court’s final decision on the matter.

“As a deeply religious Jewish university, Yeshiva cannot comply with that [state court] order because doing so would violate its sincere religious beliefs about how to form its undergraduate students in Torah values,” the university argued in an emergency appeal before the Supreme Court.

The university first opened its doors in 1886 and is currently one of the oldest Orthodox Jewish universities in the U.S. The institution filed its emergency appeal Aug. 29 as a means of pushing back on the “unprecedented intrusion” of the school’s religious beliefs, The Daily Wire noted.

A previous ruling by New York Supreme Court Justice Lynn Kotler ordered Yeshiva University to recognize the LGBTQ group.

“Even if the court were to adopt Yeshiva’s religious function test, the court would reach the same result,” Kotler’s ruling said.

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“Plaintiffs’ counsel correctly characterizes defendants’ argument on this point: defendants want this court to find that Yeshiva is a religious corporation in the same manner an ordinary person would describe themselves as a religious person,” the ruling added.

“There is no doubt that Yeshiva has an inherent and integral religious character which defines it and sets it apart from other schools and universities of higher education. However, Yeshiva must fit within the term ‘religious corporation’ as the legislature intended the term to mean in the [New York City Human Rights Law],” it said.

Attorneys for the Yeshiva Pride Alliance argued last month that the school must be forced to recognize the group.

“While Yeshiva University can espouse its Torah values without interference, it may not deny certain students access to the non-religious resources it offers the entire student community on the basis of sexual orientation,” the attorneys wrote last month in court filings.

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In June, the full Supreme Court sided with a former Washington state high school football coach who was fired for praying on the field after games.

When the school district learned that coach Joseph Kennedy was praying with the team, they told him that he could pray separately from the students. Kennedy declined to change his practice, arguing that students were not forced to pray with him but that several did of their own volition. He was placed on paid leave by the district, which then led to a First Amendment lawsuit.

Last year, lower courts sided with the Bremerton School District. The case went before the Supreme Court in April; the high court ruled 6-3 in his favor.

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