Yeshiva University Suspends All Clubs to Avoid Recognizing Pride Alliance
According to The Commentator, Yeshiva University’s student newspaper, school officials sent an email saying that as the Jewish High Holy Days approach, the university will “hold off on all undergraduate club activities while it immediately takes steps to follow the roadmap provided by the US Supreme Court to protect YU’s religious freedom.”The freeze came two days after the Supreme Court narrowly decided, on a 5-4 vote, not to hear an emergency appeal of a New York state court’s ruling that the university had discriminated against the YU Pride Alliance by refusing to acknowledge it as an officially recognized on-campus group.
By refusing to hear the university’s emergency appeal, the high court has allowed the lower court ruling to temporarily stand while the case is litigated on its merits in the courts.Official recognition by the school would have allowed the Pride Alliance to use school facilities as meeting spaces, put up fliers on school bulletin boards advertising its meetings and events, and have a booth set up at the school’s club fair.The student group’s lawyer, Katie Rosenfeld, told The Washington Post the shut-down is “a throwback to 50 years ago when the city of Jackson, Miss., closed all public swimming pools rather than comply with court orders to desegregate.”“The Pride Alliance seeks a safe space on campus, nothing more,” Rosenfeld wrote to The Post. “By shutting down all club activities, the YU administration attempts to divide the student body, and pit students against their LGBT peers.”The shutdown of all on-campus clubs is the latest action taken by the university as part of an extended legal dispute between it and the Pride Alliance.
