In Fellowship of Christian Athletes v. San Jose Unified School District Board of Education, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals (which has jurisdiction over Alaska, Arizona, California, Hawaii, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Oregon, and Washington), ruled that a California school district likely violated the free-exercise rights of a Christian club when the District revoked its status as an official club over its requirement that leaders abide by a “statement of faith,” a portion of which calls upon student leaders to affirm a belief that sexual intimacy may only be enjoyed within the context of marriage and, more specifically, between one man and one woman.
The Fellowship of Christian Athletes (“FCA”), a ministry group formed for student athletes to engage in various activities through their shared Christian faith, holds certain core religious beliefs, including a belief that sexual intimacy is designed only to be expressed within the confines of a marriage between one man and one woman. FCA requires students serving in a leadership capacity to affirm a Statement of Faith and to abide by a sexual purity policy. As a result of this practice, the San Jose Unified School District revoked FCA’s status as an official student club on multiple campuses for violation of the District’s non-discrimination policies. Specifically, the District relied on its “All-Comers Policy,” which prohibited official student clubs from enacting discriminatory membership and leadership criteria.
In response, FCA filed a lawsuit in federal court alleging that the District violated the Equal Access Act, First Amendment, and Equal Protection Clause and seeking a preliminary injunction requiring the District to reinvoke its status as an official club. A federal district court denied FCA’s request for an injunction to be reinstated.
However, on appeal, a three-judge panel on the Ninth Circuit reversed the district court’s decision and ordered that FCA chapters in the District be reinstated, emphasizing that FCA would likely prevail on its First Amendment free exercise claim and that it would suffer harm from reduced membership if it was not granted a preliminary injunction reinstating it as a recognized club. At the request of the District, the appellate court reviewed the case en banc, in which a case in the Ninth Circuit is heard before eleven randomly selected judges rather than by a smaller panel of three judges. En banc review is typically reserved for unusually complex or important cases or when the court feels there is a particularly significant issue at stake.
The en banc Ninth Circuit, in a 9-2 decision, affirmed the three-judge panel’s decision that the FCA will likely prevail on its First Amendment free exercise claim. The majority of the en banc Ninth Circuit reasoned that FCA is “likely to succeed on their Free Exercise claims because the District’s policies are not neutral and generally applicable and religious animus infects the District’s decision making.” The majority emphasized that “[a]nti-discrimination laws and policies serve undeniably admirable goals, but when those goals collide with the protections of the Constitution, they must yield—no matter how well-intentioned.” It further stressed, “[w]e do not in any way minimize the ostracism that LGBTQ+ students may face because of certain religious views, but the First Amendment’s Free Exercise Clause guarantees protection of those religious viewpoints even if they may not be found by many to ‘be acceptable, logical, consistent, or comprehensible.’”
This case reaffirms that students do not “shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate,” as the U.S. Supreme Court famously stated more than 50 years ago in the landmark case Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District.
For questions about this case or freedom of speech and expression issues more generally, please contact Pam Simaga or any HLERK attorney.
Source: Fellowship of Christian Athletes v. San Jose Unified Sch. Dist. Bd. of Educ., No. 22-15827, 2023 WL 5946036 (9th Cir. Sept. 13, 2023)
