Alliance Defending Freedom, a conservative lawfirm, sent letters to the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Iowa State University this week to inform campus leaders that they have “needlessly” removed Bibles from their overnight guest rooms after receiving complaints from an atheist group.
Freedom from Religion Foundation had complained that allowing Bibles in guest rooms violated the First Amendment, and both universities acquiesced and booted the Bibles in recent months.
Alliance Defending Freedom, however, sent letters to refute the stance that the Bibles break the law.
“Public universities, which are the marketplaces of ideas, should understand that the First Amendment does not require them to purge something from campus just because it happens to be religious. Rather, the Constitution requires them to accommodate religion,” Litigation Staff Counsel Travis Barham said in a prepared statement. “The Bibles can legitimately stay because their presence in guest rooms is simply a discrete way of accommodating the needs of traveling guests. They are in no way a government promotion of religion.”
The letters to the two public universities state as much – and more:
“In reality, the First Amendment does not require you to remove these Bibles, and by removing them, you may have demonstrated the very viewpoint discrimination and hostility towards religion that the First Amendment prohibits…. The Supreme Court and numerous other federal courts have repeatedly condemned efforts to exclude or restrict religious materials and activities as viewpoint or content discrimination, both at universities and elsewhere.”
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