‘I can’t get around the blatantly discriminatory treatment’
The University of Iowa allowed a Christian student group that supports same-sex romantic relationships to limit its leadership to students who agree with that stance.
It refused to extend the same leeway to a Christian student group that opposes same-sex romantic relationships, and derecognized it.
The taxpayer-funded institution tried to explain away this disparate treatment, with limited success, during oral argument before the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals last week.
Represented by religious liberty firm Becket, InterVarsity Graduate Christian Fellowship is trying to hold university officials personally liable for their behavior, which was recognized as unconstitutional by a trial court.
Members of the InterVarsity Christian Fellowship at the University of Iowa. (Photo via Becket)
(CN) The University of Iowa asked an Eighth Circuit panel Wednesday to rule that university officials are not individually liable for violating a Christian student group’s First Amendment rights.
A federal judge in Des Moines ruled in September 2019 that the Iowa City-based university violated InterVarsity Graduate Christian Fellowship’s constitutional rights to free speech and free exercise of religion by revoking the group’s status as a registered student organization.
The university said InterVarsity’s requirement that its leaders abide by its Christian religious beliefs opposing same-sex relationships violated the school’s nondiscrimination and equal-opportunity policy.
Pro-life demonstrators hold up signs during the 2020 March for Life in Washington, D.C. on Jan. 24, 2020. | The Christian Post
A three-judge panel on a federal appellate court struck down several pro-life laws in Arkansas, and two of the judges have called on the U.S. Supreme Court to revisit its ruling in a major abortion case that upheld
Roe v. Wade.
The ruling by three judges on the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals prevents two pro-life laws passed by the state in 2019 from going into effect. One of the laws prohibits abortions after 18 weeks gestation while the other prohibits abortion of a child based solely on a diagnosis of Down syndrome.
(CN) The First Amendment rights of an Iowa street preacher were violated when police hustled him away from a Davenport street festival, his lawyer told an Eighth Circuit panel Tuesday.
Not so, countered a lawyer for the city: The street preacher was disrupting a public festival and his removal by police had nothing to do with the content of his speech, he said.
The Thomas F. Eagleton U.S. Courthouse in St. Louis, home of the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals. (Photo via U.S. General Services Administration)
Cory Sessler sued the city and three Davenport police officers who made him leave a downtown street festival site in 2018 after they received complaints that some festivalgoers were offended by his amplified preaching and placards warning that sinners are destined for hell.