SAN FRANCISCO – A federal judge has ruled that the University of California may deny course credit to applicants from Christian high schools whose textbooks declare the Bible infallible and reject evolution.
Disputing claims of religious discrimination and stifling of free expression, U.S. District Judge James Otero of Los Angeles said the university's review committees cited legitimate reasons for rejecting the texts – not because they contained religious viewpoints, but because they omitted important topics in science and history and failed to teach critical thinking.
Otero's ruling Friday, which focused on specific courses and texts, followed his decision in March that found no anti-religious bias in the university's system of reviewing high school classes. Now that the lawsuit has been dismissed, a group of Christian schools has appealed Otero's rulings to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco.
“It appears the UC is attempting to secularize private religious schools,” attorney Jennifer Monk of Advocates for Faith and Freedom said yesterday.
Monk's clients include the Association of Christian Schools International and Calvary Chapel Christian Schools of Murrieta and five students.
Charles Robinson, the university's vice president for legal affairs, said the ruling “confirms UC may apply the same admissions standards to all students and to all high schools without regard to religious affiliations.” What the plaintiffs seek, Robinson said, is a “religious exemption from regular admissions standards.”
The lawsuit, filed in 2005, challenged UC's review of high school courses taken by would-be applicants to the 10-campus system. Most students qualify by taking an approved set of college-preparatory classes. Students whose courses lack UC approval can remain eligible by scoring well in those subjects on the Scholastic Assessment Test.
Christian schools in the suit accused the university of rejecting courses that include any religious viewpoint, “any instance of God's guidance of history, or any alternative . . . to evolution.”
Otero said in March that the university has approved many courses containing religious material and viewpoints, including some that use texts such as “Chemistry for Christian Schools” and “Biology: God's Living Creation,” or that include scientific discussions of creationism as well as evolution.
UC denies credit to courses that rely largely or entirely on material stressing supernatural over historic or scientific explanations, although it has approved such texts as supplemental reading, Otero said.
For example, in Friday's ruling, he upheld the university's rejection of a history course called “Christianity's Influence on America.” According to a UC professor on the course review committee, the primary text, published by Bob Jones University, “instructs that the Bible is the unerring source for analysis of historical events” and evaluates historical figures based on their religious motivations.
