Judge weighs Minnesota law that bans religious tests for colleges participating in state program

MINNEAPOLIS -- A federal judge is considering whether to overturn a Minnesota law that bans religious tests for colleges that participate in a state program that allows high school students to take college courses for credit.

The state argued at a hearing Monday that the 2023 law rightly protects high school students who are not Christian, straight, and cisgender — those whose gender identity matches the sex they were assigned at birth.

The law targets the state's only two conservative Christian colleges that require students to sign statements of faith — Crown College in St. Bonifacius and the University of Northwestern in Roseville. A group of parents and high schoolers who are earning college credits at those institutions, or would like to, are suing to overturn the law, saying it violates their religious freedom under the First Amendment to choose schools with campus atmospheres that that reflect their values.

The longstanding Minnesota Postsecondary Enrollment Options program lets high school students earn free credits at state expense at public or private colleges of their choice, although the courses must be nonsectarian. Around 60,000 students have taken advantage of it. State education officials learned more than a decade ago that Crown and Northwestern in Roseville bar students who aren’t Christian or who are LGBTQ+ from campus activities, and started trying to change the law regulating the program.

After several previous attempts to change it failed at a divided Legislature, the legislation passed in 2023 after Democrats gained control of both chambers. Democratic Gov. Tim Walz signed it into law after a session that enacted a series of broad new protections for LGBTQ+ rights.

Under an agreement between the states and colleges, the law is not being enforced while court challenges are pending, including any appeals. U.S. District Judge Nancy Brasel didn't say at the end of the hearing when she would rule. But she confirmed with both sides after two hours of highly complex legal arguments that the law will remain on hold into the next academic year if there's no final resolution by then.

“The state of Minnesota has a fundamental right to protect its students from discrimination,” Assistant Attorney General Jeff Timmerman argued at the hearing.

But Eric Baxter, an attorney from The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, told the court that the law improperly targeted the two colleges after the state had long allowed them to restrict admission to the program.

“There's no evidence that the admissions requirements at Crown and Northwestern were causing a problem that was so compelling that they had to restrict these schools' religious practices,” Baxter said.

Baxter argued that the U.S. Supreme Court has held several times in recent years has held that once a state starts funding private institutions, the First Amendment forbids excluding participants on the basis of religion, citing high court decisions in cases from Montana,Maine and Missouri. He also said a Supreme Court decision in a Philadelphia case established that a state's interest in preventing discrimination against LGBTQ+ people doesn't outweigh the rights of religious organizations to live out their beliefs.

Timmerman countered that those precedents don't fit this case. The state's attorneys wrote in their brief that maw was changed to eliminate all forms of discrimination — not just religious discrimination — because the schools' policies exclude LGBTQ+ students based on their sexual orientation and gender identity, not just students of other faiths. And they said the schools have offered no evidence that admitting non-Christian or LGBTQ+ high school students to the program would harm the colleges' religious beliefs or practices.

Northwestern, whose former presidents include famed evangelist Billy Graham, is one of the largest providers of classes to high schoolers under the state program. Both schools allow all students, regardless of their beliefs, to take online courses.

Baxter said afterward that many states have college credit programs like Minnesota's, but that most states that have tried to exclude religious organizations have been shot down.