Virginia State University, a public institution in Petersburg, Virginia, is the target of a new federal lawsuit filed by two Christian student organizations that say the school stripped them of their recognized campus status and placed them under the authority of a university-appointed minister, while leaving non-Christian groups untouched.
The suit, brought by attorneys with Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) on behalf of campus chapters of Women of Victory and Bethel Campus Fellowship, challenges VSU’s updated Campus Ministries Policy. Under that policy, all Christian student-led ministries must operate under the “governance and influence” of VSU Campus Minister Thomas Wynn and an advisory board of faculty and university personnel. The policy also bars student ministries from affiliating with their national parent organizations.
Non-Christian and Muslim student organizations are exempt from the requirement, according to the lawsuit.
ADF Senior Counsel Tyson Langhofer told Fox News Digital the policy amounts to viewpoint discrimination that the First Amendment forbids.
“The message that it would send is that the First Amendment means what it says: that you can’t treat secular groups better than religious groups,” Langhofer said. “You can’t treat one religious group worse than another religious group, regardless of your motives. It doesn’t matter whether your motives are unity or things like that. You can’t have one single campus pastor on campus that is able to control all Christian groups and then exclude the Muslim group and allow them to receive all of the benefits.”
Langhofer also criticized what he described as a broader retreat from intellectual diversity on American campuses.
“Higher education has really broke from its long-standing desire to promote intellectual diversity and to actually seek truth, and, instead, they are essentially telling students that any disagreement, that certain speech is violence and that hearing difference of opinions on important topics is actually not encouraged. It’s actually discouraged,” Langhofer said. “I think that higher education is really failing in its primary role, which is to educate the next generation … how to deal with living in a pluralistic society with people who have different opinions.”
Women of Victory and Bethel Campus Fellowship are local chapters of national organizations that host Bible studies, leadership training and spiritual development events for students both on and off the Petersburg campus, located in Dinwiddie County. Although both groups still appear on VSU’s official website, ADF representatives said that listing does not reflect their actual status under the new policy.
The groups are asking a federal court to restore their recognition as official registered student organizations.
Langhofer pointed to “theological differences” between Campus Minister Wynn and the student organizations as a possible root of the dispute, though he stopped short of drawing a firm conclusion.
“I don’t know whether that’s the fruit of this or not,” Langhofer said of the policy’s origins. “What it ultimately comes down to is an attempt to control what these groups are doing by the university, rather than allowing these groups to continue to operate in the same fashion as they’ve operated for a long time.”
He said the case rests on well-established law.
“The Supreme Court has held for a very long time that all student groups on campus must be treated equally, and you can’t single some out simply because of what they believe,” Langhofer said.
Virginia State University did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Fox News Digital.
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