High Court to Hear Ban on Subsidy to Religious Group : Judiciary: Christian students at University of Virginia claim discrimination. Other organizations at state-run school receive money.

Reacting to widespread complaints from Christian legal advocates, the Supreme Court said Monday that it will consider a lower court ruling that bars a state university from subsidizing a student magazine because it espouses an “avowedly Christian” perspective.

In recent years, Christian legal groups have complained that the high court’s insistence on a strict separation of church and state sometimes translates into discrimination against mainstream religious groups.

For example, some school and state college officials have said that their institutions may subsidize student groups that promote feminism, environmentalism, gay rights or a variety of other causes but they may not subsidize student groups that promote religion.

This approach “strips religious speakers of their constitutional protection” to freedom of speech and “condones discrimination against religion,” according to lawyers for a Christian students’ group at the University of Virginia.

Their complaints now have won a hearing at the high court.

Last year, the court intervened when a school district refused to rent its auditorium to a group that espoused Christian values, even though it allowed other groups to use the facility. In overturning that discriminatory policy, the justices said that public officials must treat religious groups like all others when their doors are opened to outsiders.

The University of Virginia case gives the court a chance to decide whether the same rule applies when government subsidies are disbursed.

During the 1990-91 school year, 118 student groups on the Charlottesville campus received subsidies from a mandatory student fee, including 15 groups that publish magazines or newspapers.

But a magazine called Wide Awake: A Christian Perspective at the University of Virginia was denied $5,862 in publishing fees by the student council because it was deemed a “religious activity.” The council relied on university guidelines in refusing the subsidy.

The magazine, founded by undergraduate Ronald Rosenberger, is published three times during the year and distributed free on campus.

Backers of the magazine pointed out that other religiously oriented groups, such as the Muslim Students Assn. and the Jewish Law Students Assn., had their activities and publications subsidized. The university defended those subsidies as being for cultural activities.

Rejecting a lawsuit filed by the Christian students, a U.S. appellate court in Richmond, Va., sided with the university and agreed that it would be unconstitutional for it to pay for “the propagation of the Christian religion.”

“Because Wide Awake is a journal pervasively devoted to the discussion and advancement of an avowedly Christian theological and personal philosophy,” the university may not subsidize it, the appeals court said. It cited the First Amendment’s ban on laws fostering an “establishment of religion.”

But in their appeal, the students cited the other words of the First Amendment, which protect “freedom of speech” and the “free exercise of religion.”

The justices said they will hear the case (Rosenberger vs. the University of Virginia, 94-329) and try to clarify the conflict built into the First Amendment. A written ruling will be issued by next summer.

“Our view is that the government has to be neutral,” said University of Chicago Law Prof. Michael W. McConnell, who represented the religious students in their appeal to the high court. If the university plans to pay for some student publications, it cannot exclude others simply because they are religious, he said.

However, a leader of Americans United for Separation of Church and State said the Constitution does not permit the use of public money to pay for promoting religion.

“University students have the right to evangelize but they shouldn’t pass the collection plate to the taxpayers,” said Barry W. Lynn, the group’s executive director.

Acting in a second religion case, the court rejected an appeal from a landlord in Alaska who said his Christian beliefs prompted him to refuse to rent an apartment to an unmarried couple. The Alaska Supreme Court said his refusal violated state anti-discrimination laws.

This issue has arisen in several states and is pending before the California Supreme Court. The justices may prefer to rule on the matter after several lower courts have issued opinions.

Only Justice Clarence Thomas voted to hear the appeal of the case (Swanner vs. Anchorage Equal Rights Commission, 94-169).

In other actions, the court:

* Agreed to decide whether cities can exclude group homes for recovering alcoholics and drug addicts from an area of single-family homes (City of Edmonds, Wash., vs. United States, 94-23). According to the U.S. Court of Appeals in San Francisco, the federal Fair Housing Act bars such discrimination against handicapped people, including former addicts, and preempts local zoning laws.

* Said it would clarify the standard of proof for determining when the government will pay compensation to children who suffer complications after taking vaccines (Shalala vs. Whitecotton, 94-372). In 1986, Congress set up a fund to pay compensation but government lawyers said that lower courts have been too willing to award money, even when the child’s ailments are not caused by the vaccine.

* In a case involving a divorced couple from Los Angeles, agreed to rule on whether an ex-wife can get a refund for taxes that she paid but were owed by her ex-husband (United States vs. Williams, 94-395). A U.S. appeals court in California said the ex-wife, Lori Rabin Williams, was due a refund, but the high court agreed to hear the federal government’s appeal.