Court: University Of Iowa Officials Can Be Held Liable For First Amendment Violations

IOWA CITY — University of Iowa administrators should have known better when they “discriminated against religious student groups” several years ago amid uproar over one of their Christian organizations’ refusal to allow an openly gay member to become a leader, according to a federal appeals court decision Monday. Nearly four years after the Business Leaders in Christ student group sued UI for violating its free-speech, free-association, and free-exercise rights by deregistering it for barring a gay member from a leadership post, a U.S.