Yeshiva University is finally recognizing an LGBTQ club on campus, capping a years-long legal battle that rose to the United States Supreme Court.
The university issued a joint statement with the LGBTQ club, which will now be called Hareni, announcing that both sides came to an agreement. The unofficial club that long sought recognition was known as the YU Pride Alliance.
“The parties have reached an agreement and the litigation is ending,” the two sides said in a joint statement posted on the university’s website. “Current students will be implementing a club, to be known as Hareni, that will seek to support LGBTQ students and their allies and will operate in accordance with the approved guidelines of Yeshiva University’s senior rabbis. The club will be run like other clubs on campus, all in the spirit of a collaborative and mutually supportive campus culture.”
One of the key issues of contention in the protracted legal battle was the classification of the school. Yeshiva University previously claimed that it was exempt from the city human rights law’s public accommodations provision and that it had a First Amendment right to reject the club. However, New York State Supreme Court Justice Lynn R. Kotler found that the school did not qualify for an exemption because while a “religious corporation” would be entitled to be exempt, Yeshiva University is incorporated under the New York State Education Law, not the Religious Corporation Law.
Eventually, state lawmakers — including out gay State Senator Brad Hoylman-Sigal — penned letters stressing that the school purported to be an “independent” and “non-sectarian” not-for-profit institution for funding purposes, but subsequently said it was a “religious corporation” when it wanted to ban the club. Among others, New York City Comptroller Brad Lander also sent a letter to Yeshiva University strongly urging recognition of the YU Pride Alliance — or else risk future funding.
In 2022, the school launched an LGBTQ club that it said would amount to an “approved traditional Orthodox alternative,” but the YU Pride Alliance at the time criticized it as a “desperate stunt” and a “sham.”
In the end, however, a university spokesperson told the New York Times that the new club reflects the same one that was approved a couple years ago. But Zak Sawyer, a spokesperson for the plaintiffs, told the Times that the latest settlement is a much better one than the last one, which he said “was created without student input, had no members, held no events, and never existed outside of a press release.”
This time, he said, “Hareni has secured written guarantees ensuring it has the same rights and privileges as other student clubs, including access to campus spaces, official student event calendars and the ability to use ‘L.G.B.T.Q.’ in its public materials — none of which existed under YU’s prior ‘initiative'”
