Three students have filed a complaint against Virginia officials over allegedly being denied access to scholarship grant programs due to their decision to pursue religious studies.
Cameron Johnson and Luke Thomas, two recent high school graduates planning to attend Liberty University, and Trace Stevens, a current Liberty student, filed the complaint late last month in United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, Richmond Division.
Named defendants in the lawsuit include A. Scott Fleming, director of the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia; John Jumper, chair of the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia; Major General James W. Ring, adjutant general of Virginia; and Donald Unmussig, chief financial officer of the Virginia Department of Military Affairs.
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According to the complaint, Johnson and Thomas were denied a Tuition Assistance Grant because the SCHEV excludes certain religious programs of study, while Stevens, a member of the Virginia Army National Guard, was denied a grant from the National Guard Tuition Assistance Grant Program because his academic study was centered on “religious training or theological education.”
The three students are being represented by the Alliance Defending Freedom, a nonprofit legal organization dedicated to defending religious freedom, which has successfully argued religious liberty cases before the United States Supreme Court.
ADF Legal Counsel Jake Reed told The Christian Post in an interview Thursday that his organization had received several phone calls from people lamenting the parameters of the grant programs.
“We decided to take the case because, at bottom, what is happening in the great state of Virginia, this exclusion for certain students who decide to pick certain religious programs is unconstitutional, violates the First Amendment,” he said. “We want to make that right.”
As to the status of the case, Reed added, “we’re expecting the state defendants’ first response or answer to the complaint next week,” and that “we’re just waiting to see what happens with that.”
“This is a generally available — or supposed to be generally available — public benefit program to all college students in the state of Virginia,” Reed told CP. “All Trace, Cameron and Luke want is to be treated equally to their classmates. So that’s what this case is about.”
The Christian Post reached out to the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia and the Virginia Department of Military Affairs. A spokesperson for SCHEV directed CP to reach out to the Virginia Attorney General’s Office, which replied on Friday, explaining that it declined to comment due to ongoing litigation.
In recent years, there has been considerable litigation over whether students pursuing a Christian education are eligible for certain tuition assistance programs or similar publicly funded benefits.
In 2022, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in David Carson et al. v. A. Pender Makin that Maine’s state tuition assistance program could not prevent parents from applying the funds to institutions that include religious instruction.
Last December, Georgian officials reversed course and allowed for Luther Rice College and Seminary to participate in student financial aid programs that were available to other colleges, having previously excluded any “school or college of theology or divinity.”
