Last month, a religious student group made its case before the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals to defend its right to select leaders who share its faith. All the group wants, it explained, is to ensure that its leaders can do the things their roles entail, such as leading the group in prayer and fostering a sense of religious community on campus. This seems like common sense. Practicing Jewish students should lead religious Jewish groups, practicing Christians should lead religious Christian groups, and practicing Muslims should lead religious Muslim groups.

Unfortunately, though, some teachers, administrators, and ultimately the school district misunderstood the students’ desire to create a faithful community and accused the group of having a a prejudiced desire to exclude others.

We intend to set the record straight. Religious student groups prefer leaders who share their faith because such leaders are best suited to help the clubs flourish, not because those groups want to discriminate against outsiders. School officials should welcome such clubs and allow them to take the steps necessary to create a community for religious students, educate other students about their faith, and foster religious diversity.

The relevant case is Fellowship of Christian Athletes v. San Jose Unified School District Board of Education. For more than a decade, student groups affiliated with the Fellowship of Christian Athletes met regularly on campuses in the school district. That changed in 2019, when the district claimed that the groups’ leadership criteria violated the district’s non-discrimination policy and derecognized FCA as a campus club.

As important as equality may be, and as abhorrent as hateful discrimination is, neither is implicated by FCA’s leadership criteria.

FCA supports student-athletes through religious initiatives. Its events are open to all, but FCA requires its student leaders — those responsible for leading worship, directing Bible studies, and personally embodying the club’s ministry — to affirm their belief in the tenets of the group’s faith. Simply put, it seeks leaders who adhere to the beliefs that animate the group’s mission.

Such leadership criteria are not unique to FCA and should not be controversial. Every group prefers leaders who possess traits that align with its purpose. No one bats an eye, for example, when sororities restrict its leadership positions to women, or when the National Honor Society requires its leaders to possess high GPAs and good moral character. Why? Because everyone intuitively recognizes that these aren’t instances of “discrimination” motivated by hatred; rather, they are examples of groups choosing leaders best positioned to further their respective missions. The leadership qualifications are part of what ensures that a group remains a group with a coherent identity.

This is especially true of religious groups such as FCA, whose membership consists primarily of devout students for whom religion is not just an activity, but a guiding principle of life. For such a group, the freedom to choose leaders who practice its faith is vital to its existence as a successful religious group. Forcing the group to accept leaders who reject its convictions could make it impossible for the group to engage in religious practice and have a healthy sense of community. The overall religious character of the group, its very identity, would wane accordingly.

Consider a student club of religious Jewish students. To meet the students’ needs, which likely include prayer gatherings, Sabbath services, and the communal rituals observed on Jewish holidays, the group’s leader must be familiar with the relevant Jewish laws and practices. Given the complexity of these laws, a practicing Jewish student — one who has firsthand experience sincerely observing the Jewish commandments — is uniquely positioned to lead such a group. With an observant Jew at its helm, the group will be able to facilitate these activities and provide students with an opportunity to practice their faith with their classmates. Without one, an essential element of the group’s identity will disappear, potentially eliminating the very feature that distinguished the group from the rest of the student body.

The district fails to understand this. Its actions against FCA both endanger the unique religious identity of the group and threaten to dilute diversity on its school campuses. Sure, student bodies may remain religiously diverse in the short term, but in order for the students to meaningfully express that diversity and afford the school community the benefits that come with it they require varied, thriving religious groups of the sort the district refuses to protect. And in the long term, expressly suppressing religious groups will diminish religious expression and experience among individual students.

Recall The Giver? In that dystopian novel, society adopted a radical egalitarianism described as “sameness” by erasing history, engaging in genetic engineering, and perpetually drugging the population. The result was a bland world in which no one experienced love, excitement, or beauty. Of course, this is hyperbole, but the point is critical. By prohibiting groups from expressing their unique differences out of the fear that some may feel excluded, we risk losing the diversity of experience, people, and faiths that enrich our lives.

Elisheva Marcus is a law student at NYU School of Law and a Tikvah legal fellow. Howard Slugh is general counsel of the Jewish Coalition for Religious Liberty.