The Milwaukee School of Engineering Student Government Association declined from recognizing the Christian organization ReJOYce in Jesus Campus Fellowship because of the group’s reluctance to admit individuals who do not live according to the group’s Christian guidelines.
In a letter sent to RJCF, the student government said “We will not allow for any form of discrimination based on any class which is protected by the statutes for the State of Wisconsin, by the University Policies of the [MSOE].”
However, the group’s decision came as a shock to many, and members of the RJCF were forced to approach the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, an organization dedicated to the defense of the individual rights of faculty and students.
FIRE President David French said the Philadelphia-based organization has seen several instances of administrators “blatantly disregarding the rights of religious students,” according to a release.
In fact, when two Ohio State University students attempted to join OSU’s Christian Legal Society, an evangelical organization, they were denied last fall because one student was not evangelical and the other was homosexual.
However, in a contentious verdict, OSU administrators were forced to recognize CLS and to change the university’s nondiscrimination policy to allow religious organizations to bar students.
“MSOE guarantees its students’ individual rights,” French said. “But because this Christian group is exercising those rights in a way that conflicts with campus orthodoxy, the college is ignoring its guarantee.”
MSOE’s choice to challenge the decision made at OSU is not new. Four other universities have already gone to court after the OSU decision, including Arizona State University-Tempe, University of California’s Hastings College of Law, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill and Pennsylvania State University-University Park.
However, many do not agree with the position of these universities because of a responsibility to adhere to freedom of association policies present in the First Amendment.
According to University of Wisconsin political science professor Donald Downs, MSOE’s position sounds constitutionally suspicious. The situation is made especially complex since universities have a responsibility to protect both a nondiscrimination policy and the rights of groups to assemble freely.
“It’s a tougher call, you can’t have rights as a group if you don’t have the right of exclusion,” Downs said. “It seems to me all groups should have the right to exclude. A pro-gay-rights [group] would not want an anti-homosexual to join.”
UW professor emeritus of law Gordon Baldwin agrees universities had to be viewpoint-neutral.
“The university has very limited power to regulate the membership of a student group,” Baldwin said.
While universities will continue to argue over their responsibility to fund contentious groups, Downs said the predominant issue is freedom of association.
“For the state to say you have that viewpoint but we’re not going to fund you … I don’t think that works because freedom of association is a major part of free speech,” Downs said. “The right of association trumps any right the school has not to fund.”
