(Reuters) – U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor on Friday allowed Yeshiva University to refuse to recognize an LGBT student club that the Jewish school in New York said violated its religious values, temporarily blocking a judge’s ruling who ordered it to allow the group. Sotomayor temporarily stayed the judge’s ruling that a city anti-discrimination law required Yeshiva University to recognize the YU Pride Alliance as a student club while the school appeals to a lower court. The liberal justice handles some cases for the court from a group of states including New York. Sotomayor’s stay ordered by the judge will remain in effect pending further order from her or the full Supreme Court, which has a conservative 6-3 majority. The application process for Yeshiva’s student club was set to end on Monday, and the school said that absent court intervention it would be forced to recognize the YU Pride Alliance in violation of its religious values. “We are grateful that Justice Sotomayor stepped in to protect Yeshiva’s religious freedom in this case,” said Eric Baxter, Yeshiva’s attorney at the conservative legal group Becket Fund for Religious Liberty.

Kathryn Rosenfeld, an attorney for the club, said she will await the court’s final order and remains committed to creating a safe space for LGBT students on the university’s campus “to build community and support each other without discrimination.” The YU Pride Alliance was unofficially formed as a group in 2018, but Yeshiva decided that granting it official status would be “inconsistent with the school’s Torah values ​​and the religious environment it seeks to maintain.” The dispute hinges in part on whether the Yeshiva is a “religious corporation” and therefore exempt from the New York Human Rights Act, which prohibits discrimination by a venue or provider of public accommodation. The story continues New York State Judge Lynn Kotler ruled in June that the school’s primary purpose is education, not religious worship, and that it is subject to anti-discrimination law. Kotler also rejected the university’s argument that forcing him to recognize the club would violate his religious freedom protected by the First Amendment to the US Constitution. After higher state courts in August refused to stay the judge’s ruling, Yeshiva turned to the U.S. Supreme Court, emphasizing its religious character, including requiring undergraduate students to participate in intensive religious studies. “As a deeply religious Jewish university, Yeshiva cannot comply with this order because to do so would violate its sincere religious beliefs about how to form its undergraduate students in Torah values,” the school told the Supreme Court. The Modern Orthodox Hebrew University, based in Manhattan, has approximately 6,000 students enrolled in undergraduate and graduate programs. Among the school’s values, according to its website, are a belief in the “infinite worth of every human being” and “the responsibility to reach out to others with compassion.” Backed by its increasingly assertive conservative justices, the US Supreme Court in recent years has expanded religious rights while narrowing the separation between church and state. During its term that ended in June, the court upheld a Washington state public high school football coach who refused to stop offering Christian prayers with players on the field after games and ruled in favor of Christian families in Maine who sought access to taxpayers’ money. they pay for their children to attend religious schools. In its upcoming term, which begins Oct. 3, the court will decide a major new legal battle pitting religious freedom against LGBT rights that includes a free-speech claim by an evangelical Christian web designer that she cannot forced under a Colorado anti-discrimination law to produce gay marriage websites. (Reporting by Nate Raymond and Andrew Chung in New York; Editing by Will Dunham)