A federal appeals court ruled that University of Iowa officials who curb stomped a Christian student club and kicked them off campus precisely because of their faith can be held personally accountable for the harm they caused.
This is a victory. But now this club needs to make these people pay. They need to set an example that there will be consequences to discriminating against Christians. If Christians don’t push back, then others will continue discriminating against Christians. We encourage them by not pushing back against it.
So here’s what happened. The university intentionally went after the Business Leaders in Christ, or BLinC, for requiring its student leaders to affirm the Christian faith. So yeah, they actually want their leaders to be Christians. Makes sense, doesn’t it? Not to Iowa University.
The university administrators outrageously said that this requirement was a blatant violation of the university’s nondiscrimination policy, even though it allowed other religious groups to do the exact same thing.
After a long and tortuous court history, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit said it was blatant discrimination that violates the First Amendment. And the ruling makes plain that university officials are personally responsible for such knowingly unconstitutional conduct.
The Judge wrote:
The law is clear: state organizations may not target religious groups for differential treatment or withhold an otherwise available benefit solely because they are religious. That is what happened here. The individual defendants may pick their poison: they are either plainly incompetent or they knowingly violated the Constitution. Either way, they should not get qualified immunity.
“BLinC takes good students and makes them better by strengthening their resolve to remain true to their moral compass in the cutthroat business world,” said Eric Baxter, vice president and senior counsel at Becket. “Any wise university would be thrilled to have them on campus, but the University of Iowa tried hounding them off instead. Fortunately, the First Amendment protects their right to remain on campus on the same terms as every other student group.”
This type of anti-Christian discrimination will only stop when others hear that Christians mean it when they say they want freedom of religion. Christians must make these whiny SJW agitators think twice before exercising their tenuous link to power.
The left changes the country through the courts. Christians and conservatives don’t. We utilize prayer and politics. Politics is mostly useless because judges simply say we don’t have the right to pass laws.
It’s time to get litigious. Sure, the left will riot and break stuff and threaten your life but we should do worse. We should unleash some lawyers on them. Hold them personally responsible. Make anti-Christians a cautionary tale.
Every kid used to know that bullies would have their way with you until you made them pay. That doesn’t mean going to the principal. That means making them pay. Until Christians push back on those who would like to disappear us, this will continue.
Make the University pay. Make the administrators pay so that when future administrators at other colleges decide to discriminate some lawyer will warn them off this behavior by saying, “Holy crap! Leave the Christians alone. Didn’t you hear what they did to those poor bastards at Iowa?
