Universities and Religious Freedom - fighting back

In California, the University of California system has denied admission to Christian high school students because the curriculum used in the courses required for admission was Christian based. Bob Jones, A-Beka, Alpha Omega…mainstream Christian K-12 publishers… did not meet the requirement that curriculum because they mentioned God and the Bible. This included literature and history courses, not just the science courses that you might expect. You can read more about it at WorldNetDaily.

Couple that case with another I just read about at National Review, and you begin to feel like those trying to marginalize Christians are attempting to take another giant step forward. So far, the Constitution has won out, but the fact that educational bureaucrats feel that they can get away with these things is disturbing. It suggests that the average understanding of the Bill of Rights is seriously flawed.

Here’s a portion of Richard Garnett’s post over at Bench Memos.

Yesterday, the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit, in an opinion written by Judge (and famed law-and-religion scholar) Michael McConnell, issued its opinion in a case called Colorado Christian University v. Weaver. (Click here for more). In a nutshell, the decision and opinion are fantastic. The court held that the Constitution does not permit Colorado to discriminate against "pervasively sectarian" religiously-affiliated schools by excluding otherwise-eligible students who attend such schools from state scholarship programs. Along the way, the court read very narrowly the Supreme Court’s decision, a few years ago, in Locke v. Davey, which some have interpreted to allow governments to exclude religious schools from education-reform and – funding programs. That decision, Judge McConnell wrote, "does not extend to the wholesale exclusion of religious institutions and their students from otherwise neutral and generally available public support."