Legal expert reviews dismissal of Yale Four lawsuit

This summer, federal judge Alfred V. Covello dismissed the Yale Four lawsuit. The four Orthodox Jewish plaintiffs, who alleged that Yale had discriminated against them by refusing to let them live off-campus, plan to appeal. Stephen L. Carter, LAW '79, a Yale law professor who has written extensively on religion and the law, sat down with The Yale Herald to discuss the legal and ethical aspects of the case.

JULIA TIERNAN/YH Professor Stephen Carter, LAW '79, sides with the Yale Four.

In their legal brief, the students filed for damages and injunctive relief on several grounds, including their allegation that Yale had violated their free exercise of religion, the Fair Housing Act, and the Sherman Antitrust Act. Carter, who had earlier argued the students' case to University officials, explained that the "ruling to dismiss [the case] didn't say anything about religious freedom claims." He continued, "None of the [plaintiffs'] claims [in court] directly required the court to evaluate the comparative merit of the argument the students were making [about religion]."

Carter said, "Nothing in the whole opinion is about religion. There was a claim that Yale violated trust laws and the courts dismissed it."

Carter said that had Yale been a public university, it would have lost the case "because it would have broken the Constitution of the United States." However, as a private institution, Yale is "not covered by the Constitution," according to Carter. In the dismissal, Judge Covello sided with the University's claim that "Yale cannot be considered a state actor."

"The judge was saying that the state does not control Yale," Carter explained. He cited a case involving an Orthodox Christian student suing the University of Nebraska because he wanted to live off-campus. The student won because he was suing a public university whose housing policy decisions could be deemed actions of the state.

Carter did not support the argument that the Orthodox Jewish students knew beforehand of Yale's housing policy and could have opted to attend another school. He gave a hypothetical example of African immigrants coming to America one hundred years ago and protesting against racial segregation. Carter said he would disagree if the locals had said, "Well, you knew it was segregated before you came."

Carter stressed that though the court's dismissal indicated that "Yale has the power to do what it did, [the court's dismissal] didn't say [whether] it was the wrong thing to do." Carter, in fact, believes that on ethical grounds, Yale should not have made the students pay for dorm housing though they were living off-campus. "If you're going to have a university and say that everybody can come," he explained, "you have to work harder to accommodate students" whose religion makes them have different needs than other students.

He continued, "Suppose that under your religion, you have certain dietary restrictions and can't eat in the dining hall. Yale should not charge you for your food. Yale should not charge them for this service that their religion forbids them to use." In the ruling, the judge also stated that Yale was willing to provide the students with special housing. Carter said, however, "Their religious understanding of the world would not allow them even to live in [housing with] single-sex bathrooms."

Carter emphasized, though, that "Yale's argument is not ridiculous, it's insufficiently thought through.... Yale could have compromised better." He explained that Yale was concerned about what lawyers call "the slippery slope concern, [meaning] if we grant this claim, what about the next claim?"

Carter said that his view is that "you could grant this claim and reject the next." He stated he agreed with the policy that "the university shouldn't grant an accommodation claim when an accomodation claim would require the university to compromise Yale's central educational mission." He stated that Yale's only argument against the students would be "if they believed that dorm living was so important that they made no exceptions." However, he pointed out that the University does make exceptions for married students and students over 25 years of age.

"In most of American history, the answer has been, `too bad, you lose,'" Carter said. He pointed out that Americans have failed to realize that "people who passed the law passed it because they had no religious objection to it." Carter offered Prohibition as an example. The advocates of Prohibition were Protestant groups who did not use alcohol in their religious ceremonies. Yet, Prohibition laws failed to take into account that other religious groups, like Catholics, did. Carter argued, "American history is a process of saying, `be like everyone else...it's not our job to accommodate you.' That's [morally] wrong."

Carter said, "I don't think that law is the ideal way to solve these problems." He added, "People can be mutually respectful, [though] that has not happened in this case."

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