In a 5-4 vote, the justices said the religious school will for now have to comply with a New York state court ruling that, as a public accommodation, the Yeshiva is covered by the New York City Human Rights Act York and is required to provide the Pride Alliance with the same access to facilities as dozens of other student groups. The group said it includes a classroom, bulletin boards and a club exhibition booth. The university asked the Supreme Court to intervene, and last week Justice Sonia Sotomayor granted a temporary stay. But on Wednesday, a majority of justices said it was too early for the high court to get involved. “It appears that applicants have at least two more avenues for expedited or temporary state injunctive relief,” the court’s brief said. If they fail, Yeshiva can go back to the Supreme Court. Although unsigned, it was the work of Sotomayor, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justices Elena Kagan, Brett M. Kavanaugh and Ketanji Brown Jackson. Justice Sotomayor, for now, is staying the lower court’s ruling on the LGBTQ group Four judges dissented, saying the Yeshiva’s response to the student group was the result of “an interpretation of the Torah … after careful study.” “The First Amendment guarantees the right to the free exercise of religion, and if that provision means anything, it prohibits a State from imposing its own preferred interpretation of the Bible,” said the dissent, written by Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. and with Justices Clarence Thomas, Neil M. Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett. “Yet that is exactly what New York has done in this case, and it is disappointing that a majority of this Court refuses to grant relief.” Alito said the four are likely to concede the case if the university fails in the New York state appeals court, and “Yeshiva would probably win if its case came before us.” In a filing asking the Supreme Court to intervene, the university said that “as a deeply religious Jewish university, Yeshiva cannot comply with this order because to do so would violate its sincerely held religious beliefs about how to form of his undergraduate students in Torah values”. The school is represented by the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, which called the lower court’s decision an “unprecedented” violation of the school’s First Amendment rights. The student club called the lower court’s ruling a simple interpretation of state law, saying the Supreme Court’s intervention was unwarranted — especially before the New York appeals courts weighed in. “This decision does not affect the University’s well-established right to express to all students its sincere beliefs about Torah values and sexual orientation,” the group said in its filing with the high court. At the same time, he says, “it cannot deny some students access to the non-denominational resources it offers to the entire student community on the basis of sexual orientation.” The school does not require its officers or faculty to be Jewish and enrolls 5,000 undergraduate and graduate students of all religious backgrounds, the group said. Its affiliated Cardozo School of Law has had an official gay student body for years.
