Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., on Wednesday called on his alma mater, Yale Law School, to either stop actions that discriminate against religions or face losing federal funding.
"Yale is discriminating against religious organizations," Sen. Hawley told Fox News' "Fox & Friends." "They don't like religious organizations that want their members to follow their same religious beliefs. It's just religious intolerance. It's wrong, and by the way, it's not permitted under federal law."
The controversy began in February, when the Yale Federalist Society invited an attorney from Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), a Christian legal organization that represents people involved in faith-based claims, to speak on campus.
The move angered the Yale LGBT group "Outlaws," which called ADF, a "hate group." ADF has, in the past, represented businesses such as a Colorado bakery that refused to bake a wedding cake for a same-sex couple
Students also called on Yale to stop providing stipends for students who worked over the summer in ADF's Blackstone Legal Fellowship, leading Yale Law Dean Heather Gerken to say the school's nondiscrimination policy would come into play.
Yale Law School said it has put a committee into place and is talking with organizations to work out the accommodations, but Hawley said he thinks Yale is trying to backtrack.
"I want to see the details of their policy," he said. "I want to see that they are treating religious students and religious organizations in the same way they treat every other legal organization and every other student, and if Yale doesn't do that . . . they should have their federal funding stripped."
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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