EDITORS' CORNER
Key Takeaways
- Minnesota passed a law in 2023 that bans schools from participating in its dual-enrollment program if they require students to sign a statement of faith.
- Judge Nancy Brasel declared the law unconstitutional, stating it violates the First Amendment by discriminating against religious organizations and individuals.
- Attorneys for the state argued the law protects “high school students who are not Christian, straight, and cisgender.”
Students who attend religious high schools in Minnesota cannot be excluded from a state-funded program that allows them to earn college credits, a federal judge ruled Friday.
U.S. District Judge Nancy Brasel ruled in favor of the students and two Christian colleges that sued the state for banning religious schools from the Minnesota Postsecondary Enrollment Options program, the Catholic News Agency reports.
The program allows 10th to 12th-grade students to take college courses and obtain credit tuition-free. Colleges participating in the program are reimbursed for the cost of teaching those students.
“We raise our children to put their faith at the center of their lives,” plaintiffs Mark and Melinda Loe stated in a news release.
“Minnesota tried to take that right away from us by denying kids like ours the opportunity to attend schools that reflect their faith. We are grateful for this ruling, which protects students across the state and the schools they want to attend,” the Loes stated.
In her ruling, Judge Brasel wrote that the 2023 law, which prevents schools from participating in the program if they require students to sign a statement of faith, is unconstitutional.
The First Amendment “gives special solicitude to the rights of religious organizations,” and the government cannot ban private institutions from participating “solely because they’re religious,” Brasel wrote.
Additionally, the judge “threw out a related nondiscrimination requirement that prohibited participating schools from basing admission to the program on the basis of gender, sexual orientation or religious beliefs,” WCCO News reports.
The 2023 law had the backing of Gov. Tim Walz and LBGTQ activists. In court, attorneys for the state argued the law protects “high school students who are not Christian, straight, and cisgender,” according to the report.
The president of the University of Northwestern at St. Paul, one of the two Christian colleges that sued the state alongside the students, celebrated the ruling in a statement over the weekend.
“Northwestern exists to provide Christ-centered higher education that equips students to grow intellectually and spiritually, and to serve effectively with God-honoring leadership in their home, church, community, and the world,” President Corbin Hoornbeek stated in a news release.
Now, because of the ruling, the university “can continue to serve the Minnesota families who wish to get a head start in their college journey as members of our unwavering campus community,” Hoornbeek said.
An attorney for the plaintiffs at Becket Fund for Religious Liberty expressed optimism about the case earlier this year in an interview with The College Fix.
“The Supreme Court has ruled three times in the last seven years that, when the government makes funds available to the public generally, you can’t exclude participants based on their religion. That’s exactly what the Minnesota Department of Education has done here,” attorney Eric Baxter told The Fix in January.
