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US Supreme Court: Appeal pending
Photo: Patrick Semansky/AP
A US Supreme Court ruling has forced an Orthodox Jewish private university to recognize an LGBTQ student union for the time being.
The private Yeshiva University tried to block the group's recognition after it had already been ordered at the local level by a New York judge.
Now the urgent application before the US Supreme Court narrowly failed: the judges voted five to four against it.
On Wednesday (local time), the Supreme Court said the university had not yet exhausted its state-level appeals.
If the university does not succeed at a lower court level, it can later turn to the Supreme Court again.
The urgent application was received by the court on Friday, whereupon the judges blocked the New York judge's decision for the time being in order to give themselves more time for the decision-making process.
Student Association Status for the YU Pride Alliance
A New York judge had ordered Yeshiva University to grant the YU Pride Alliance student club, in which homosexual, bisexual and transgender people have joined together, the status of a student association from the start of the semester.
The group, which was founded in 2018, would thus have the right to use the university’s premises and services.
Yeshiva University, which has around 5,000 students, said in its application to the Supreme Court that as a "deeply religious" Jewish university it could not implement the judge's order because it violated its "sincere religious beliefs about the values of the Torah". .
The student club, on the other hand, argued that the university also offered numerous non-religious courses and also accepted non-Jewish students.
Therefore, she cannot deny certain students access to resources because of their sexual orientation.
The lawsuit comes as part of an ongoing controversy in the US over the balance between religious freedom and anti-discrimination.
After several new appointments by former US President Donald Trump, the majority of the Supreme Court is conservative judges who, in some decisions, give the right to religious freedom a higher priority than protection against discrimination.
Six of the nine Supreme Court judges belong to the conservative camp.
lmd/AFP
