A Christian student group that prides itself on being inclusive when it comes to race has sued Rutgers University in New Jersey over the school's anti-discrimination policy.
InterVarsity Multiethnic Christian Fellowship was kicked off Rutgers' New Brunswick, N.J., campus in September and its roughly $1,200 in university funding was frozen after the organization deleted the university's anti-discrimination language from a section of its organizational constitution.
The university refuses to allow groups to meet on campus or receive university funding if they discriminate on any of several bases, including political or religious affiliation. The students have been holding their weekly meetings and Bible-study sessions off campus since September.
The student group has about 20 members. It said it needs to be able to make sure its student leaders have the same beliefs as the organization.
''To adopt in writing a statement that we don't discriminate on the basis of religion is to tell a lie,'' said David A. French, the Lexington, Ky.-based lawyer for the group.
Rutgers spokeswoman Sandra Lanman said the university would have no comment on the suit until officials had studied the complaint.
Michelle DeRitter, president of the Rutgers chapter of Madison, Wisc.-based InterVarsity, said students reviewing the organization's charter discovered the clause in two places. They left it in the section that applies to organizational membership, she said, but took it out when it came to leaders.
Instead, the students substituted a requirement that officers sign a statement asserting their belief in Christianity.
''C'mon, shouldn't the pope be Catholic?'' asked Laura Vellenga, the director for InterVarsity chapters in central and southern New Jersey. ''We're not trying to pick a fight here.''
DeRitter, 21, a chemistry major from Clifton, said university administrators seemed to object to including the religious statement more than leaving out the anti-discrimination policy.
Some religious groups on campus don't object to the school's anti-discrimination policy.
Rabbi Esther Reed, assistant director of the Jewish organization Rutgers University Hillel, said her members reviewed their constitution this fall and didn't spend much time looking at that part of it.
''In practical terms, it doesn't really affect us so much,'' she said. ''I can understand how InterVarsity would be concerned that they would be required to put this in writing.''
InterVarsity, which has been on campuses across the country for more than 60 years, was caught in a similar controversy two years ago at Tufts University in Boston. The group was suspended there after it tried to block a lesbian from running for a leadership position.
Also, French said the group was close to filing a complaint against the University of North Carolina, but officials there this week rescinded a threat to revoke the organization's charter on grounds similar to the situation at Rutgers.
InterVarsity's legal costs are being shouldered by Alliance Defense Fund, a group that represents religious organizations in cases where their beliefs are at odds with government policy.
The lawsuit was filed Monday in U.S. District Court in Newark.
Attorney French said the issue in the Rutgers case is similar to that faced by churches that receive public funding to provide social services and must consider job applicants who disagree with their beliefs or cases in which Boy Scout troops that bar gays from leadership positions want to meet in schools that have anti-discrimination policies.
To the Rev. Welton Gaddy, president of Washington-based Interfaith Alliance, the matter is simple: Religious groups that accept public funding must be prepared to sacrifice some of their religious principles in exchange.
''You can't have it both ways,'' he said. ''You can't claim that you're a distinctive organization on the basis of religion and then turn around and say you want to be treated just like every other organization on campus.''