Common Sense Chattanooga

Update on Religious Liberties for College Students. David Fowler, President of FACT (www.FACTN.org) sent this out today...

Explanation of "Vandy Bill" and Status of Veto

Many have asked in the last two days whether SB 3597/HB 3576 regarding the religious liberty rights of college student organizations has been vetoed and have asked for more information than I was able to get out quickly on Wednesday. Lastly, at the end I've also shared my thoughts.

Procedural Posture:

The bill has not been vetoed yet. In fact, it has not even reached the Governor's desk yet so that he could veto it. The Governor issued a statement that he planned to veto the bill and some in the press have inaccurately reported that the veto has already occured. The Governor may well follow through sometime next week, but until then, who knows. With the number of calls he's getting, he could change his mind. And, at the very least, he might pick up the phone and let Vanderbilt know it needs to fix the mess it has now created for him.

Background:

By a vote of 20 to 13 in the State Senate and 61 to 23 in the State House, the Tennessee legislature passed Senate Bill 3597/House Bill 3576 that protects campus ministries like F.C.A., Navigators, Christian Legal Society, and Campus Crusade from being kicked off the campus of any of our public universities. But the bill also tries to protect those ministries at Vanderbilt University.

Vanderbilt University has adopted an "all-comers" policy that requires all student groups to accept as a member any student who wishes to join or to allow any member to run for a student office. For example, Vanderbilt recently told a Christian student organization that it would not be recognized as long as its selection criteria continued to include that its officers have a "personal commitment to Jesus Christ." However, because Greek fraternities and sororities did not want to have to accept any student that wants to join, Vanderbilt exempted them.

State legislators and even members of Congress have tried to work with Vanderbilt in recent weeks. But, with the legislature about to adjourn till next January, this legislation tried to protect the status quo at Vanderbilt just until June of next year by giving Vanderbilt the option over the next year of (i) continuing to recognize the Christian organizations or (ii) of applying its all-comers policy to all student organizations, including fraternities and sororities.

The Governor has now expressed concern over the legislature's effort to maintain the status quo at Vanderbilt for a year to give all interested parties more time to try to work this situation out. BUT NOTE: a veto would also wipe out the permanent, on-going protections in the bill for campus ministries on public college campuses that!

My thoughts:

This is not an easy issue. That's why the bill started out applying only to public colleges. But over time, the considerations in my mind that weighed in favor of the bill were as follows:



(i) Vanderbilt, according to most legal scholars, was clearly misapplying a federal law (and exemption in Title IX for Greek organizations) to circumvent the very Supreme Court ruling Vandy has pointed to as justification for its all-comers policy,

(ii) almost 50 members of Congress will be announcing today their disagreement with Vandy's use of this law and its circumvention of federal policy,

(iii) Vanderbilt does get millions of dollars from taxpayers (state and federal) many of whom would not want their money being used to support an entity that is destroying these campus ministries,

(iv) other private and public colleges across the nation were looking at Vandy to see if they could get way with this misuse of federal law so that they could follow suit,

(v) our civil rights laws already interfere with private institutions/businesses, most notably in this instance for the purpose of protecting a person’s religion, and Vanderbilt is simply a private business in the business of education, and finally and perhaps most importantly,


(vi) the government regulation in this case was for a fixed, definite time of 13 months so that Congress and all other interested parities could try to find a way out of this mess without these Christian ministries being soon disbanded at Vandy.


I'm apologize in advance that my schedule the next few days will not allow me to respond to futher email inquiries. I'm totally covered over. Thank you for your understanding.

David Fowler, Esq.
President
Family Action of Tennessee, Inc.

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