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TechnoratiA federal appeals court ruling that a Christian university in Colorado can receive state scholarship money is the latest in a string of legal victories for religious schools seeking public dollars.
The most recent case involved Colorado Christian University, a college of 2,000 students in suburban Denver where most students must attend chapel weekly and sign a promise to emulate the life of Jesus and Biblical teachings.
Colorado Christian faculty must sign a statement that that the Bible is the "infallible Word of God."
The 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver ruled Wednesday that the state of Colorado overstepped its bounds with a system allowing students to use state scholarship dollars at some religious colleges, but not those dubbed "pervasively sectarian" — a judgment that required bureaucrats to investigate such tricky criteria as whether religion courses amounted to neutral study or proselytizing.
Colorado had allowed students to use their scholarships at Methodist and Roman Catholic universities in the state, but not at a Buddhist university or at Colorado Christian, which is nondenominational.
The ruling is the latest in a series of potentially fatal blows to three decades of legal doctrine that had distinguished between religiously connected colleges that were nonetheless in the mainstream of American higher education, and those with a religious outlook that permeates every aspect of the education they offer.
Supporters of Colorado Christian's position hailed the ruling as an important victory for students.
Students "attending institutions such as CCU who take their faith-based commitment seriously should have an equal opportunity to participate in Colorado's financial aid program," said Paul Cortis, president of the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities.
But critics called it the latest example of a worrisome trend.
"The bottom line is that taxpayers will now end up having to pay for religious indoctrination," said Barry Lynn, executive director of the group Americans United for Separation of Church and State. The law wasn't discrimination, but "a sensible judgment by Colorado that some colleges are so religious that they cannot expect taxpayers to support them."
The ruling cuts to a conundrum in the First Amendment, which prohibits the state from establishing any religion, but also prohibits religious discrimination. Religious colleges have argued their students shouldn't be deprived of a state benefit everyone else can get.
Courts have split the difference by allowing forms of state support to colleges with some religious affiliation, but not to those that take additional steps, such as requiring certain religious beliefs and chapel attendance.
But this latest ruling — on the heels of others sympathetic to religious colleges — calls into question whether any legal distinction between "pervasively sectarian" and merely religious colleges can survive.
Last year, California's Supreme Court upheld the rights of "pervasively sectarian" institutions to benefit from government programs that issue bonds on their behalf.
Another federal appeals court, the Fourth Circuit in Richmond, Va., sided with Columbia College in Maryland, a school affiliated with the Seventh-day Adventist Church that that had been denied access to a state bond finance program.
The Sixth Circuit in Cincinnati upheld bonds issued on behalf of David Lipscomb University, a school in Tennessee affiliated with the Churches of Christ where students attend daily Bible classes.
In 2004, the U.S. Supreme Court sided with the state of Washington against a student who claimed discrimination because he couldn't use a publicly funded scholarship to pursue a degree in theology.
But in Wednesday's ruling, the 10th Circuit took a narrow view of that decision.
It acknowledged that the Supreme Court had allowed states to withhold their support for certain degree programs. However, the 10th circuit ruled, that position doesn't "extend to the wholesale exclusion of religious institutions and their students" from sources of government support that are otherwise neutral.
Nor can Colorado make intrusive judgments about what constitutes a "sectarian" or "pervasively sectarian" school.
"The First Amendment does not permit government officials to sit as judges of the indoctrination quotient of theology classes," Judge Michael McConnell wrote.
John Karakoulakis, a spokesman for Colorado's department of higher education, declined to comment or say whether the agency would appeal.
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