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Court Defines Funding Criteria For University of Wisconsin Student Groups

By Howard M. Friedman

In a long-running debate over use of student activity fees to fund a Catholic student group?s activities at the University of Wisconsin- Madison, a Wisconsin federal district court has issued a declaratory judgment requiring that funding decisions be made on a viewpoint neutral case-by-case basis, instead of categorically denying funding to worship, proselytizing and activities involving sectarian religious instruction. In Roman Catholic Foundation v. Regents of the University of Wisconsin System, 2008 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 72980 (WD WI, Sept. 24, 2008), the court dissolved an earlier preliminary injunction (see prior posting) and instead merely ruled that "the University may not categorically exclude worship, proselytizing or sectarian instruction from segregated fee funding unless it does so pursuant to a rationale that is reasonable in light of the purposes of the forum and viewpoint neutral."

Under this rationale, according to the court, the University could refuse to fund worship if it determined that

activities involving little more than an assembly of students who offer praise to a person, object or idea are less valuable to the forum than an assembly of students who engage in the back-and-forth discussion of an idea. Thus, the University may decline to fund activities involving nothing more than mechanical praise, provided that it does not simultaneously fund secular activities that lack a discussion component.

Applying this standard, the court concluded that the University had failed to adequately justify specific refusals to fund activities challenged in this case.

Full post as published by Religion Clause on September 27, 2008 (boomark / email).