In Fellowship of Christian Athletes v. District of Columbia, (D DC, July 11, 2024), a D.C. federal district court issued a preliminary injunction requiring D.C.'s Jackson Reed High School to reinstate Fellowship of Christian Athletes as a recognized student organization for the school year 2024-2025. FCA's recognition had been suspended because it required its student leaders to affirm its Statement of Faith which bars sexual relations outside of heterosexual marriage and bars any sexually immoral act including homosexuality. This was seen as a violation of the school's anti-discrimination policy. The court concluded that applying the anti-discrimination policy in this manner violates the Religious Freedom Restoration Act because it substantially burdens FCA's exercise of religion. The court said in part:
[T]he District’s interest is unjustifiably speculative. It seeks to “protect[] the safety and well-being of its students by promoting an equitable environment free of discrimination.”... [T]he District readily admits that a student in noncompliance with FCA’s Statement of Faith—whether an atheist, Jewish, gay, or lesbian student—is unlikely to seek a leadership position.... The District can thus offer “only speculation” that FCA’s reinstatement would pose an actual threat of discrimination against any Jackson-Reed student based on a protected characteristic.... Such a speculative goal does not pass muster under strict scrutiny.
Moreover, the District’s exclusion of FCA as a means of eliminating discrimination is “fatally underinclusive.”... [T]he District permits student groups besides FCA to continue operating at Jackson-Reed even though they restrict membership on the basis of protected characteristics and/or ideological alignment.... The District’s “interest” in nondiscrimination “cannot justify” a nondiscrimination policy “that requires only religious” groups to “bear [its] weight.” ...
The court also concluded that the school had violated the First Amendment's Free Exercise Clause, concluding that the school's policy was not generally applicable and thus was subject to strict scrutiny. It said in part:
[T]he District permits secular groups to limit their membership to ideologically aligned students while denying the same right to FCA with respect to its leadership. The Court can find “no meaningful constitutionally acceptable distinction between the types of exclusions at play here.”
