Religious schools win again

Colorado Christian University is latest to get favorable ruling over public money

Associated Press

July 25, 2008

A federal appeals court ruling that a Christian university in Colorado can receive state scholarship money is the latest in a string of legal victories for religious schools seeking public dollars.

Q. Who's the winner?

A. Colorado Christian University, a college of 2,000 students in suburban Denver where most students must attend chapel weekly and sign a promise to emulate the life of Jesus and biblical teachings. Colorado Christian faculty must sign a statement that the Bible is the "infallible Word of God."

Q. What did the court say?

A. The 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver ruled Wednesday that the state of Colorado overstepped its bounds with a system allowing students to use state scholarship dollars at some religious colleges but not those dubbed "pervasively sectarian" — a judgment that required bureaucrats to investigate such tricky criteria as whether religion courses amounted to neutral study or proselytizing. Colorado had allowed students to use their scholarships at Methodist and Roman Catholic universities in the state, but not at a Buddhist university or at Colorado Christian, which is non-denominational.

Q. What do school backers say?

A. Students "attending institutions such as CCU who take their faith-based commitment seriously should have an equal opportunity to participate in Colorado's financial aid program," said Paul Corts, president of the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities.

Q. Why are critics upset?

A. "The bottom line is that taxpayers will now end up having to pay for religious indoctrination," said Barry Lynn, executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State. He said the law wasn't discrimination but "a sensible judgment by Colorado that some colleges are so religious that they cannot expect taxpayers to support them."

Q. What have other courts done?

A. Last year, California's Supreme Court upheld the rights of "pervasively sectarian" institutions to benefit from government programs that issue bonds on their behalf. Another federal appeals court, the 4th Circuit in Richmond, Va., sided with Columbia Union College in Maryland, a school affiliated with the Seventh-day Adventist Church that had been denied access to a state bond finance program. The 6th Circuit in Cincinnati upheld bonds issued on behalf of Lipscomb University, a school in Tennessee affiliated with the Churches of Christ where students attend daily Bible classes. In 2004, the U.S. Supreme Court sided with the state of Washington against a student who claimed discrimination because he couldn't use a publicly funded scholarship to pursue a degree in theology.

Q. What's at stake?

A. This ruling — on the heels of others sympathetic to religious colleges — calls into question whether any legal distinction between "pervasively sectarian" and merely religious colleges can survive.