WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court said on Wednesday that it would let stand for now a ruling that Yeshiva University must recognize an L.G.B.T. student group. The vote was 5 to 4, with the majority saying that the university, a Modern Orthodox Jewish institution in Manhattan, must first pursue challenges to the ruling in state court.
Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., writing for the four dissenters, said that further challenges were pointless and that the majority had inflicted grave harm on the university’s right to religious freedom. “A state’s imposition of its own mandatory interpretation of Scripture is a shocking development that calls out for review,” he wrote.
The majority’s order was brief, unsigned and provisional, which is typical when the justices rule on applications seeking emergency relief. It criticized the university’s litigation strategy, saying its lawyers had not asked a state appeals court to speed its appeal and had not properly sought to block the trial judge’s ruling in the meantime. “If applicants seek and receive neither expedited review nor interim relief from the New York courts, they may return to this court,” the order said.
It reflected the votes of Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, Brett M.
Kavanaugh and Ketanji Brown Jackson. The order dissolved an interim stay entered last week by Justice Sotomayor. Justice Alito wrote that requiring the university to seek relief in the state courts amounted to ruling that it must, at least for a time, give up its religious rights.
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Elena Kagan
Samuel A.Alito-Junior
Justice Alito
Sonia Sotomayor