A Jewish University Getting Millions of $$ FromTax Payers Say They R Not a School
Not a school so they can reuse anyone who is gay and no way for LGBT Jews to have a gay-straight alliance. However, they do have their hand out to get money given to Universities to help, so they can help students of low means. So this is the case the Supreme court is faced with. What do you think?
By a 5-to-4 vote, the court refused to block a trial judge’s ruling that required the university to recognize the group under New York City’s anti-discrimination law.
New York times
The Supreme Court said on Wednesday that it would let stand for now a ruling that Yeshiva University must recognize an L.G.B.T. student group.
The vote was 5 to 4, with the majority saying that the university, a Modern Orthodox Jewish institution in Manhattan, must first pursue challenges to the ruling in state court.
Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., writing for the four dissenters, said that further challenges were pointless and that the majority had inflicted grave harm on the university’s right to religious freedom.
“A state’s imposition of its own mandatory interpretation of Scripture is a shocking development that calls out for review,” he wrote.
The majority’s order was brief, unsigned, and provisional, which is typical when the justices rule on applications seeking emergency relief. It criticized the university’s litigation strategy, saying its lawyers had not asked a state appeals court to speed its appeal and had not properly sought to block the trial judge’s ruling in the meantime.
“If applicants seek and receive neither expedited review nor interim relief from the New York courts, they may return to this court,” the order said. It reflected the votes of Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, Brett M. Kavanaugh and Ketanji Brown Jackson.
The order dissolved an interim stay entered last week by Justice Sotomayor.
Justice Alito wrote that requiring the university to seek relief in the state courts amounted to ruling that it must, at least for a time, give up its religious rights.
“I doubt that Yeshiva’s return to state court will be fruitful, and I see no reason why we should not grant a stay at this time,” he wrote. “It is our duty to stand up for the Constitution even when doing so is controversial.”
Justices Clarence Thomas, Neil M. Gorsuch, and Amy Coney Barrett joined Justice Alito’s dissent.
The case started when students at Yeshiva, which says it is “the world’s premier Torah-based institution of higher education,” sought formal recognition for a club called Y.U. Pride Alliance. When university officials turned down the request, saying the club’s proposed activities were at odds with Jewish religious principles, the club and several students sued, citing New York City’s human rights law, which bars discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation.
Justice Lynn R. Kotler, of the State Supreme Court in Manhattan — which is, despite its name, a trial court — ruled for the students on a technical ground. The university had been incorporated as an educational institution rather than a religious one, she said, meaning that it must abide by the New York City law.
Justice Kotler rejected the university’s argument that requiring it to recognize the club violated the Constitution’s protections of the free exercise of religion. She entered an injunction requiring the university “to immediately grant” the club “the full and equal accommodations, advantages, facilities and privileges afforded to all other student groups at Yeshiva University.”
The university appealed, and a state appeals court is likely to hear arguments in the case in the coming months. The university also asked two appeals courts to stay Justice Kotler’s injunction while the appeal moved forward, a request the courts denied. In Wednesday’s order, the majority said it appeared that the university had not followed the right procedure for seeking a stay from the state’s highest court.
The university, represented by the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, sought emergency relief from the U.S. Supreme Court. Its application said the injunction violated its constitutional rights to religious autonomy and to free exercise.
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“Without an immediate stay of the permanent injunction issued below,” the application said, “the nation’s leading Jewish university will be forced to give official recognition to a student organization in violation of its sincere religious beliefs and Torah values.”
Lawyers for the students responded that intervention from the Supreme Court was unnecessary and premature. “All this case is about,” they wrote, “is whether Y.U. has to allow the student club access to campus classrooms for meetings or bulletin boards.”
A lawyer for the students, Katie Rosenfeld, said Wednesday’s order was limited and sensible.
“Yeshiva University’s attempt to take this case prematurely to the Supreme Court only harms its students, and it's L.G.B.T. students who are seeking very basic rights that are uncontested at most other leading religiously affiliated universities,” she said.
Eric Baxter, a lawyer for the university, said the court’s order was a temporary setback.
“Today, the Supreme Court instructed Yeshiva University to make an additional effort to get the New York courts to grant them emergency relief and made clear that if that protection is not provided, they can return to the Supreme Court to seek its protection again,” he said.
The court’s order meant that the justices will not, for now, address the latest clash between anti-discrimination principles and claims of conscience. In 2018, in Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission, the court considered but did not definitively resolve a challenge to a state law forbidding discrimination based on sexual orientation from a Colorado baker who had refused to create cakes for a same-sex wedding.
But last year, the court ruled that a Catholic social services agency in Philadelphia could defy city rules and refuse to work with same-sex couples who apply to take in foster children. Later in the court’s new term, which starts next month, the justices will consider a sort of sequel to the Colorado case, this one concerning a web designer who objects to providing services for same-sex marriages.
Jonah E. Bromwich contributed reporting from New York.
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