Yeshiva University has announced that it will officially recognize an L.G.B.T.Q. toeivah student club on campus, bringing an end to a years-long legal battle over whether the institution could deny the group official recognition on religious grounds.
YU is home to roughly 6,000 students on four campuses in Manhattan and the Bronx.
YU had for years refused to recognize the club, which had been known as the Yeshiva University Pride Alliance. The case made its way through state and federal courts, even reaching the U.S. Supreme Court, and was closely watched by religious organizations and religious freedom groups.
But now the administration has released a statement saying that it and the students had “reached an agreement, and the litigation is ending.” As part of the settlement, the students said the Pride Alliance would be renamed Hareni.
In a statement, the school explained that the club “will seek to support L.G.B.T.Q. students and their allies and will operate in accordance with the approved guidelines of Yeshiva University’s senior rabbis.” It added: “The club will be run like other clubs on campus, all in the spirit of a collaborative and mutually supportive campus culture.”
Throughout years of legal wrangling, YU took steps to deny the club official recognition, including imposing a brief ban on all on-campus clubs. The dispute drew the attention of state lawmakers, who criticized the university’s position and suggested it might have imperiled its ability to access public funds.
YU did not explain why it decided to change its approach.
In a statement, Hanan Eisenman, a university spokesman, said that the students who filed the lawsuit had actually agreed to a proposal YU made in 2022, when administrators surprised the students by forming a club “grounded” in Jewish religious law that they called “an approved traditional Orthodox alternative to YU Pride Alliance.”
“Our students’ well-being is always our primary concern,” he said. “We are pleased that our current undergraduate students will be leading the club announced today, which is the same club approved by our senior rabbis two and a half years ago.”
But Zak Sawyer, a spokesman for the plaintiffs, said the settlement went far beyond what YU proposed in 2022, which he said “was created without student input, had no members, held no events, and never existed outside of a press release.”
“Hareni has secured written guarantees ensuring it has the same rights and privileges as other student clubs, including access to campus spaces, official student event calendars, and the ability to use ‘L.G.B.T.Q.’ in its public materials — none of which existed under YU’s prior ‘initiative,’” he said.
The university’s administration had for years rejected student demands to recognize an L.G.B.T.Q. club because it said doing so would conflict with halacha.
After a group of students and alumni sued YU in 2021, its administration argued in court that its refusal was legally protected because it was exempt from New York’s civil rights laws as a Jewish religious institution.
Judges in New York rejected the university’s religious freedom arguments, which led the school to file an unusual emergency stay to the Supreme Court in 2022. The court ruled in a 5-to-4 decision that YU must abide by lower court rulings and pursue any challenges in state court before it appealed to the Supreme Court.
{Matzav.com}The post TOEIVAH: Yeshiva University Recognizes L.G.B.T.Q. Club After Lengthy Battle first appeared on Matzav.com.