By Ismail Royer

In 2018, the University of Iowa decided that religious student organizations should be prohibited from limiting leadership positions to those who shared their religious beliefs. Student groups who did so, the university declared, were violating the school’s anti-discrimination policy.

After reviewing the constitutions of every religious student group on campus, school officials deregistered dozens of them, which effectively meant death for those organizations. They could no longer access student funds, secure space for its activities, or be listed on the university’s website. In this way, an anti-discrimination policy aimed at protecting pluralism wiped off campus every Muslim, Jewish, Sikh, and Mormon student organization, along with nearly every Christian organization.

This ironic outcome highlights competing strains of thought as to how a society made up of people with different views and faiths should be ordered. One approach involves one religion suppressing other religions, driving them from the public square by seizing and leveraging political power. 

Another approach, that adopted by the University of Iowa and a surprising number of other public universities, assumes that it is fatal to society to tolerate the presence of religions that teach that other religions are wrong. This was the view of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, the influential Enlightenment philosopher, who wrote:

It is impossible to live at peace with those we regard as damned…tolerance should be given to all religions that tolerate others, so long as their dogmas contain nothing contrary to the duties of citizenship. But whoever dares to say: Outside the Church is no salvation, ought to be driven from the State…

At bottom, both of these approaches are the same, differing only in the details of their metaphysical assumptions. In both, the faction in power insists on agreement with its beliefs as a condition of full citizenship. There is no substantial difference between a public university that decrees that all religious student groups must believe in Christianity, and another that decrees that all religious student groups must believe that differences in creed are irrelevant. Both approaches are grounded in premises that have significant theological implications, and through their establishment as state creeds that brook no public dissent, both impinge on the free exercise of those who disagree with them.

Of course, there is no issue with respect to private universities making belief in the institution’s creed a condition for recognition of a religious student organization. In that case, the institution is merely carrying out the mission for which it exists. The issue arises only with public institutions of higher learning, those created by statute or that receive state funding such that they are essentially state actors. When such institutions impose an official creed–say, an exclusivist version of Christianity, or the universalism of the University of Iowa–they do so as an arm of the government. 

This approach to pluralism differs from that codified by the Founders in the First Amendment, which holds that the government “shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” These clauses give rise to what courts have called the doctrine of church autonomy, or more accurately, religious autonomy. Unlike the two approaches outlined above, the Founders’ approach holds that the government may neither suppress nor interfere with the religious beliefs, practices, or internal affairs of any religion.

The University of Iowa found this out the hard way, paying nearly $2 million in 2021 to settle lawsuits stemming from its decision to kick religious student groups off campus who disagreed with its Rousseauian creed. Several federal courts have ruled that such actions violate the First Amendment. And in 2020, the first Trump administration promulgated a regulation requiring colleges and universities that receive public funds to allow religious student groups to limit leadership roles to students who share their faith.

While most of these instances are resolved when the student group’s national headquarters intervenes with a stiffly-worded attorney letter, other student groups–particularly those representing religious minorities–lack the knowledge or resources to defend themselves. And if a university decides to press the issue, a student group faces the daunting prospect of years of litigation.

The fix for this is federal legislation. In September, the Equal Campus Access Act of 2025 was introduced by Sen. James Lankford (OK) in the Senate as S.2859 (where it has 28 co-sponsors) and Rep. Tim Walberg (MI-5) in the House as H.R.5505. Forty-seven faith groups sent a letter to Congress in support of the legislation, including the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, as well as Orthodox Jewish and Muslim organizations.

Last week, I joined representatives of the Christian Legal Society, InterVarsity Christian Fellowship, and Cru (formerly Campus Crusade for Christ) for meetings with the offices of several Democrat and Republican lawmakers in the House and Senate, urging them to support the bill. It was a good sign for the bill’s prospects that the staff we met with from both parties seemed to see the legislation as common sense. This is not a partisan issue, we stressed, as evidenced by the broad support across religious denominations.

To drive this home, in one meeting with a House member’s staff, I turned to my friend from InterVarsity Christian Fellowship and asked whether I, a Muslim, could become the leader of his organization. He smiled and said no. I, in turn, told him he could not become the leader of a Muslim organization–and yet, I said, turning to the Congressman’s legislative assistant, here we are: friends of different faiths, working together for the common good. 

RFI’s work in support of the Equal Campus Access Act of 2025 is only the latest round of our advocacy on behalf of religious student organizations at public universities. We have supported this legislation when it has been introduced in previous years, and through meetings with Biden Administration officials and extensive written objections, we successfully opposed that administration’s attempt to withdraw the federal regulation protecting student groups.

To safeguard pluralism across society–including that of a public university–we must protect the integrity of the organizations that populate that society. Perhaps paradoxically, defending the freedom of uniformity within organizations can make possible pluralism across organizations, a realization that can only be made when we recognize that society consists not only of individuals but of the organizations they form to pursue a range of important human purposes. 

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Ismail Royer is RFI’s Director of Islam and Religious Freedom.