A Christian student ministry has sued SUNY Broome over restrictions on faith-based leadership while a Republican club at Whitman College is challenging its denial of recognition, placing two separate campus disputes over religious and political association under legal scrutiny.
By yourNEWS Media Newsroom.
Two colleges are facing challenges over their treatment of student organizations after a Christian ministry sued a public New York institution over who may lead its organization and a free-speech group warned a private Washington college that its student government appeared to reject a Republican club because of its political views.
The disputes involve different legal frameworks. Public universities are bound by the First Amendment and may not discriminate against student groups based on viewpoint, a principle reflected in previous litigation over actions such as withholding student funding from a satirical publication. Private colleges such as Whitman are not generally subject to the First Amendment in the same manner, but organizations including the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression argue that institutions can be bound by their own promises of free speech and association.
In New York, Campus Bible Fellowship has sued SUNY Broome Community College after administrators refused to recognize the organization because its constitution requires leaders to have “a personal relationship with Jesus Christ.”
The lawsuit, filed by Alliance Defending Freedom, says losing recognition prevents the group from “reserving campus space and accessing financial resources” available to recognized organizations.
SUNY Broome maintains that the ministry’s leadership requirement conflicts with its nondiscrimination policies. Campus Bible Fellowship argues that forcing it to permit non-Christians to qualify for leadership violates its rights to free exercise of religion, speech and association.
“Forcing CBF to accept leaders who don’t share their religious beliefs fundamentally alters their religious expression” by “seeking to control a fundamental aspect of CBF’s governance, doctrine, and faith,” ADF senior counsel Tyson Langhofer said.
The dispute exists alongside significant Supreme Court precedent concerning “all-comers” rules for student organizations. In Christian Legal Society v. Martinez, the Supreme Court in 2010 upheld a public law school policy requiring recognized organizations to accept any student as a member or leader. The Campus Bible Fellowship complaint does not discuss that decision, according to a report examining the precedent.
Campus Bible Fellowship instead argues that SUNY Broome is not enforcing its own open-access policy consistently and points to other recognized organizations that appear to restrict participation or leadership according to sex.
The lawsuit follows a separate challenge from InterVarsity Christian Fellowship, which sued SUNY Broome last month with representation from the religious liberty law firm Becket.
The policy is like “telling a Yankees fan club that it has to let a Red Sox fan be president,” Becket counsel Colten Stanberry said.
SUNY Broome told Just the News that it could not comment on pending litigation. ADF did not respond when asked why its complaint did not address the Martinez precedent. The dispute has also been highlighted publicly online.
Campus Bible Fellowship is the university ministry of Ohio-based Baptist Mid-Missions Global Ministries. According to the suit, its Broome chapter has a trained chaplain, “shares the gospel of Jesus Christ as set forth in the Holy Bible through all activities” and “welcomes all students to participate in its general membership, activities, and events.” Leadership positions, however, are reserved for Christians.
The ministry says the recognition policy presents it with a “coercive and unconstitutional choice”: preserve its “Christian character” and remain unrecognized or alter its leadership rules to obtain “special access to funding,” meeting and event space, club fairs, “printing resources” and opportunities to advertise itself and its events on campus, including through SUNY Broome’s student club webpage.
Club President Jacob Seachrist, who is also a plaintiff, pays a mandatory $215 student activity fee each semester “pursuant to policies that infringe on his and CBF’s constitutional rights,” the complaint says. Recognized clubs can receive as much as $500 annually from student activity fees.
Campus Bible Fellowship was continuously recognized at Broome from 1996 until 2025. Director of Student Activities Nick Kocienewski then declined to renew the organization because 10 provisions in its constitution require voting members and officers “to adhere to CBF’s statement of faith, act as spiritual leaders, and/or maintain a personal relationship with Jesus Christ,” according to the lawsuit.
The group remained “inactive” throughout the 2025-2026 academic year and could not use the benefits available to recognized organizations. Kocienewski rejected a revised constitution submitted this spring by Seachrist, according to the complaint.
CBF is challenging the college’s open-access requirement, its nondiscrimination rule for student clubs and what the lawsuit calls the “college discretion rule.” That provision allows officials and student government representatives to deny recognition to organizations deemed to have an “inappropriate focus” or whose activities would “unduly burden or marginalize” other students.
The lawsuit argues that the rule “does not define or contain any comprehensive guidelines, standards, or criteria that limit the discretion” of decision-makers and does not require officials to “approve or deny an application within a certain time period.”
CBF also identifies Love You Like a Sister, Elevate Her and Men of Excellence as recognized campus organizations that appear to restrict membership or leadership by sex, with Men of Excellence also described as serving “men of color.” The plaintiffs argue those examples show the policy is not “neutral or generally applicable.”
Across the country, a different controversy is unfolding at Whitman College in Washington, where the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression has challenged the student government’s refusal to recognize the Whitman Republican Club.
The dispute followed what club Chairman David Dunbabin described as an hour-long questioning session involving President Donald Trump, Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Title IX before the student Senate voted 25-0 against recognition. Recognition would give the organization access to funding and other campus resources.
Dunbabin argues the decision conflicts with the Associated Students of Whitman College’s own constitution and bylaws, which protect students from discrimination based on “political beliefs” and extend protections to student organizations.
Dunbabin also said Whitman President Sarah Bolton initially encouraged him to establish the organization after learning that he worked with the local Republican Party.
“She asked me directly to start it, because I mentioned that I work with the local GOP,” Dunbabin told Seattle Red 770 AM.
FIRE subsequently sent Whitman an Aug. 31 legal warning letter, asking that the Republican Club’s fall application be judged using viewpoint-neutral standards.
The organization cited Whitman’s student handbook, which promises every student “freedom of speech, expression, and association.” FIRE argued that those promises “morally and legally” bind the college and that “First Amendment jurisprudence” should inform how Whitman fulfills them.
A FIRE spokesperson told Just the News that Whitman had not responded to the letter, which set a Sept. 14 deadline. The Republican Club’s current plan is to reapply for recognition in the fall.
Neither Whitman nor its student government responded to questions, including inquiries about Bolton’s alleged role in encouraging the club’s creation, according to the report detailing both campus disputes.
The Whitman controversy follows other disputes over ideological expression on college campuses. California’s Kern Community College District has paid millions of dollars in settlements connected to litigation involving faculty at Bakersfield College, including conservative professors who alleged retaliation over their activities with a right-leaning faculty group.
Former FIRE President and New York Times columnist David French, who has been a vocal critic of Trump and the Make America Great Again movement, said Whitman’s obligation to apply its rules neutrally should not depend on the Republican Club’s politics.
“The Republican Club could change its name to ‘MAGA Trumpers who MAGA all day and MAGA all night,’ and the university should still provide viewpoint neutral access to recognition and resources,” French said.
The controversy has also circulated through social media posts concerning Whitman’s recognition process.
FIRE’s warning relies in part on the student Senate’s March 8 meeting minutes, excerpts of which the organization later posted publicly.
Before voting on recognition, senators questioned club representatives about how they would respond to portions of the national Republican Party platform calling for “deport[ing] pro-Hamas radicals” and how students would be protected from “pro-ICE” guest speakers.
They also questioned what “language about trans and LGBTQ individuals has to do” with Republican principles and repeatedly raised what they described as “contradictions” in the organization’s positions.
Those questions followed an ICE-related event held by the club that week and a letter in the student newspaper concerning a Washington ballot proposal that would limit girls’ sports to females.
Dunbabin said he questioned why organizations including Planned Parenthood Generation Action and the Climate Justice Coalition could receive recognition while his Republican organization could not.
More than one senator suggested dropping “Republican” from the club’s name.
“You can name yourselves whatever you want, but the language of your constitution is in direct contrast to our own constitution,” a senator said in the final comment recorded in the minutes. “I would suggest that you remove the title and make a debate club.”
Club representatives pushed back during the meeting.
“Why is it on us to prove we are not harmful? All of us have been doxed on YikYak,” one response was paraphrased in the minutes.
Dunbabin separately said his room had been doxxed and that his window was “spit at multiple times from having [an] Israeli flag.”
Another response from club representatives asked, “How are we excluding minority groups when we are ourselves a minority group on campus?”
Dunbabin said “roughly” half of the Republican Club’s board members are immigrants, something reflected in a photograph of the organization, and said those members had faced worse treatment than he had.
Whitman’s student population is described as predominantly white, while a separate student survey characterizes its political climate as liberal.
The two disputes now raise separate questions about campus association rights: whether a public college can require a Christian ministry to open religious leadership positions to students who do not share its faith, and whether a private college that promises freedom of political expression and association applied those commitments neutrally when its student government rejected a Republican organization.
Original article
Comments