Orthodox Jewish University Appeals to Supreme Court After Being Forced to Recognize LGBT Student Club

Yeshiva University, an Orthodox Jewish university in New York City, has filed an emergency application to the U.S. Supreme Court after a state supreme court judge ordered the school to “immediately” approve the LGBT student group “Pride Alliance,” in violation of its religious beliefs.

“As a deeply religious Jewish university, Yeshiva cannot comply with that order because doing so would violate its sincere religious beliefs about how to form its undergraduate students in Torah values,” the university states in its emergency application.

Therefore, Yeshiva University is requesting an immediate stay pending appeal to “avoid the irreparable harm that would come to Yeshiva, its students, and its community from the government-enforced establishment of a Yeshiva Pride Alliance club.”

“The trial court held that the decision whether to have an official Pride Alliance organization on campus can be made by the government rather than Yeshiva itself in consultation with its rabbis,” the university explained.

“Relying on the New York City Human Rights Law (NYCHRL), the court concluded that the government can force Yeshiva to recognize an official Pride Alliance club because Yeshiva purportedly offers too many secular degrees to qualify for the law’s express exemptions for religious organizations,” the school added.

Moreover, the university says the “Plaintiffs admit that they want to force the creation of a Yeshiva Pride Alliance precisely to alter Yeshiva’s religious environment.”

“For example, by distributing school-sponsored ‘Pride Pesach’ packages for Passover — and to upend Yeshiva’s understanding of Torah, with which Plaintiffs disagree,” the school explained in its application.

Yeshiva went on to say that “the message of Torah on this [LGBTQ] issue is nuanced, both accepting each individual with love and affirming its timeless prescriptions.”

In its effort to “establish a caring campus community that is supportive of all its members,” Yeshiva is “wholly committed to and guided by Halacha and Torah values,” the school said.

Therefore, the university “carefully manages its own interactions with undergraduate students to help them grow spiritually.”

“For this reason, Yeshiva cannot put its own name or seal of approval on undergraduate clubs that appear ‘[in]consistent with [its] Torah values,” the university said.

Yeshiva also pointed out that it similarly “declined to approve proposed student clubs involving shooting, videogames, and gambling,” and “declined to approve a Yeshiva chapter of the Jewish ‘AEPi’ fraternity, because it concluded that certain aspects of traditional fraternity life would be inconsistent with Yeshiva’s Torah values.”

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