Christian Law Student Group Denied Recognition

By Jim Brown

July 29, 2005

(AgapePress) – The Christian Legal Society chapter at Southern Illinois University Law School is asking a federal court to order the law school to reinstate the evangelical group as an official student organization.

CLS filed suit in April, alleging the law school violated its First Amendment and Fourteenth Amendment rights by revoking the organization’s registered status. SIU dropped its recognition of CLS after a homosexual student complained to law school officials about the chapter’s requirement that its members and leaders be Christians.

CLS is now appealing their case to the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. M. Casey Mattox, litigation counsel for the CLS’s Center for Law & Religious Freedom, is one of the attorneys representing the group. He says SIU is erroneously claiming the chapter violates the school’s affirmative action policy.

“We’ve pointed out repeatedly, of course, that CLS doesn’t employ anyone,” Mattox notes, “and it’s obvious that the affirmative action policy was intended to apply to the university itself in its own employment decisions, not to student organizations.” But that argument has “fallen on deaf ears so far,” he says.

Meanwhile, as a result of the revocation of the chapter’s registered student organization status, the CLS group has been denied access to the law school’s bulletin boards, meeting rooms, and e-mail system. But all CLS is seeking, the chapter’s legal representative points out, is to be given the same treatment afforded to other campus groups.

Right now, Mattox contends, every other student organization on the SIU campus has the right to place restrictions on membership and leadership eligibility according to the group’s identity and common beliefs. “There’s both a Republican and a Democrat club at the law school,” he says, “and they can, of course, require that their members and officers agree with their Republican and Democratic beliefs. But CLS can’t require that its members and even its officers be [Christian] believers.”

CLS is asking the federal circuit court to overturn a lower court ruling denying the Christian group’s motion for a preliminary injunction, thus compelling SIU to reinstate the student group’s registered status with the university. The CLS Center for Law & Religious Freedom, the Alliance Defense Fund (ADF), and local counsel David O. Edwards with the law firm of Giffin, Winning, Cohen & Bodewes, P.C. are representing the Christian student group in the case, with ADF generously supporting the Center’s work.

Christian Law Student Group Denied Recognition Appeals for Justice