Court ruling kills atheist group’s lawsuit seeking to restrict college students’ religious ...

Court ruling kills atheist group’s lawsuit seeking to restrict college students’ religious rights

A federal court recently ended a four-year-old court battle waged by an atheist advocacy group seeking to reverse a Trump-era regulation barring universities from restricting students groups’ religious freedoms on college campuses.

The U.S. District Court for the District Court of Columbia on Jan. 15 ruled in favor of Trump’s 2020 “Free Inquiry Rule,” which allows student groups to have leaders who reflect the organization’s beliefs.

The Secular Student Alliance had sued Biden’s Department of Education in 2021 seeking to overturn the rule, arguing it is discriminatory.

“The rule gives religious student clubs the absolute right to use religion to discriminate while still receiving official university recognition and funding,” the alliance previously stated.

The court tossed the lawsuit after the education department admitted it had no plans for “publication of a final rule prior to the change in presidential administration on January 20, 2025.”

“We have a sense of freedom now, as if the wind is at our back,” said Corey Miller, president of Ratio Christi, a nationwide Christian campus apologetics ministry that had filed a friend-of-the-court brief in defense of the rule with the assistance of Alliance Defending Freedom.

“We can now have confidence that we’ll be treated fairly, inclusively, at the universities, which were largely started by Christians and for Christ,” Miller told The College Fix via email. “All we are asking for is equal freedom under the law. Sometimes we have to give continuing education to university administrators and remind them what the law of the land is.”

https://www.thecollegefix.com/court-ruling-kills-atheist-groups-lawsuit-seeking-to-restrict-college-students-religious-rights/