Sotomayor blocks lower court order that would force Yeshiva University to recognize LGBT club

(Image credit: Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

published 10 September 2022

Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor issued a stay on Friday blocking a lower court decision that would have forced Yeshiva University in Manhattan to provide official recognition to an LGBT student club, The Washington Post and The New York Times report.

"Sotomayor is the justice who reviews emergency applications from the New York region," according to the Post.

A New York state Supreme Court panel in Manhattan ruled in June that the Modern Orthodox Jewish university had, in a pair of 1967 amendments to its charter, declared itself "an educational corporation ... organized and operated exclusively for educational purposes" and therefore could not claim a religious exemption. Yeshiva called the decision "obviously wrong" and urged the U.S. Supreme Court to intervene.

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Sotomayor stayed the state court ruling "pending further order of the undersigned or of the court," suggesting that the U.S. Supreme Court could take up the school's case. The Times notes that the court "has taken an increasingly broad view of religious freedom in recent years" and that "petitioners in religious freedom cases have almost always prevailed" since Justice Amy Coney Barrett joined the court in 2020, cementing its 6-3 conservative majority.

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Grayson Quay was the weekend editor at TheWeek.com. His writing has also been published in National Review, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Modern Age, The American Conservative, The Spectator World, and other outlets. Grayson earned his M.A. from Georgetown University in 2019.

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