High court won't hear Kent schools Bible-club case

The U.S. Supreme Court declined Monday to hear the case between Kentridge High School and two former students who fought to form a Bible study group that excluded non-Christians from becoming voting members.

"Obviously we were disappointed," said Tim Chandler, legal counsel for the former students. "We were hoping the Supreme Court would resolve it."

The school in 2003 denied a charter for the group, called Truth, saying its membership requirements discriminated against students who refused to sign a statement accepting Jesus as their personal savior. Truth founders argued that the school denied their First Amendment rights and violated the Equal Access Act by preventing them from forming a group according to their religious beliefs.

Truth's founders filed their case with one major question in mind: Can a school district refuse to charter student organizations that restrict membership based on religion?

District and appellate courts responded with a resounding "yes."

Usually when the Supreme Court refuses to hear a case, that means it's over, but a legal loophole means this six-year battle might stick around.

Lawyers for the two former students say they might refile the case — starting over in U.S. District Court — with a different legal question: Did Kentridge High School already allow something similar?

Attorneys are researching whether some boys' and girls' groups — what Lind calls "vestiges of an older age" — at the school might have once limited their membership based on gender, putting them in a similar legal situation as Truth.

New trial possible

"We're willing to keep fighting if we need to," Chandler said. He said his group, the Alliance Defense Fund, will continue to research the case, but their clients have not yet decided whether to begin another trial.

"It's not dead," acknowledged Chuck Lind, general counsel for the Kent School District.

The battle over Truth started in September 2001, when Sarice Undis, then a junior, and Julianne Stewart, then a sophomore, applied for a charter from the school's student council. Truth members, who originally could be students of any faith, would read a Bible verse over the school's intercom system once a week and decorate the school once a month.

For two years, nothing happened as the school waited for the result of a similar case that started in the Bethel School District, where a student was fighting to form a religious group. When the federal appeals court ruled that religion-based student groups do not violate laws governing the separation of church and state, Truth submitted a new application and threatened to file its own lawsuit unless the school approved it.

Rules to favor believers

The student council then met to discuss the group's new application, which removed the verse-of-the-week and monthly decoration provisions and changed membership requirements. Although all students could participate in the group, only those who professed "belief in the Bible and in Jesus Christ" could be voting members and officers.

In April 2003, the council voted not to approve the group, citing its name and the availability of other church-related groups on campus as reasons.

The group sued, and Undis and Stewart submitted a new application outlining stricter membership requirements. Officers and voting members of the group would be required to sign a "statement of faith" accepting Jesus Christ as their "personal savior" and the Bible as "the only infallible, authoritative Word of God." That charter was unanimously denied by the student council.

The students lost at trial and in a subsequent appeal, with both courts ruling the school district did not violate any rights by denying Truth's charter because of the group's membership provisions. Monday, the Supreme Court said it wouldn't hear the case.

"It's an important reaffirmation of what the separation of religion and government means in a school in a practical sense," said Doug Honig, spokesman for the Washington chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union.

In its opinion, the federal appeals court pointed out what Lind called "a factual dispute" — the school might have granted charters to groups that limited membership based on gender, such as the boys' and girls' honor clubs. The details are fuzzy, Lind said, but the discrepancy gives Truth a "narrow ground" to restart the case.

Chandler called the court's opinion "frightening" and said he'd hoped the Supreme Court would take the case to resolve it.

"The impacts of the decision are very broad," he said.

Cited in college dispute

The case already has been cited in a dispute at the University of California's Hastings Law School, where the Christian Legal Society was prohibited from receiving school sponsorship because it excluded non-Christians from serving as voting members, Chandler said.

Technically, the ruling could be applied by schools to all kinds of clubs, such as a Democrat group that prohibits Republicans from joining. However, the ruling most clearly applies to "protected classes" such as racial or ethnic groups, Lind said.

Lindsay Toler: 206-464-2463 or ltoler@seattletimes.com