Faith-based university bans employees in same-sex marriages, Washington lawsuit says
For more than a year, students and staff at a private, faith-based university in Washington say they have gotten nowhere in their fight with the school’s ”homophobic” board of trustees.
Students at Seattle Pacific University walked out of their classes. They had sitt-ins outside the president’s office for 39 days. They protested by handing him rainbow LGBTQ+ Pride flags at graduation instead of shaking his hand, and went viral online for doing so.
Still, the board of trustees voted three times in 16 months to ban openly LGBTQ+ people from working full-time at the university. The school’s employee handbook comes with “Employee Lifestyle Expectations, which states in part that employees are expected to refrain from sexual behavior that is inconsistent with the University’s understanding of Biblical standards, including cohabitation, extramarital sexual activity, and same-sex sexual activity.”
So on Sunday, Sept. 11, just before the first day of classes, a cohort of queer students, alumni, and faculty filed a lawsuit against university leaders.
Chloe Guillot, a graduate student at the university, is the first plaintiff named in the suit.
“After years of cooperative efforts to engage the [board of trustees], we resort to bringing litigation, to protect our campus from the dangerous overreach of these trustees, who use SPU to advance an agenda that betrays the very Christian values upon which SPU stakes its identity,” they wrote in a news release shared by the cohort’s attorney.
“There is nothing within the practice of Christianity that necessitates the exclusion of LGBTQ+ people from our communities; rather, we are instructed to be instruments of radical love and justice on behalf of all who are marginalized,” they continued in the statement.
The 16 plaintiffs say the faculty’s stance breaches their fiduciary duties to the university “through orchestrated, bad faith efforts” that have led to disarray on campus, including plummeting enrollment, fleeing donors and high staff turnover.
“SPU’s reputation in the community is being diminished, and the students, staff, and faculty of SPU are experiencing unsafe and uncertain conditions,” plaintiff Kristi Holt wrote in the news release. She is an alum and a current instructor in the university’s chemistry department.
“We who through our very existence challenge a white-dominated, weaponized version of Christianity — queer folks, people of color, of different abilities, genders, and cultures — we have always been here, and we have always belonged,” she added.
In a statement, Seattle Pacific University director of public information Tracy Norlen said the university is aware of the lawsuit and will respond “in due course.”
Norlen shared the board of trustees’ previous statement on the decision to retain their “employee lifestyle expectations,” which said the decision means those expectations “continue to reflect a traditional view on Biblical marriage and sexuality.
The statement said the decision reflects “a prayerful and sincere commitment to the wellbeing of SPU’s identity as an Orthodox, evangelical, Wesleyan, and ecumenical institution of faith and learning.” The statement also acknowledged “disagreement among faithful Christians on the topic of sexuality and identity.”
The lawsuit states the case is about “six men (on the board of trustees) who act as if they, and the educational institution they are charged to protect, are above the law.”
It goes on to say: “They are powerful men who use their positions, as trustees of Seattle Pacific University (“SPU”), to advance the interests of a religious denomination at the expense of the students, alumni, staff, and faculty of the university.”
The lawsuit also accuses the six trustees of alienating their Black colleagues and other colleagues of color, who in turn left their posts.
“Rather than protecting this community, Defendants inflicted trauma on their fellow trustees and the entire campus,” the lawsuit states. “Defendants chose this path in order to defend a discriminatory hiring policy that undermined, and has torn apart, the heart and soul of SPU.”
It goes on to say: “This hiring policy, loathed by the SPU community, prohibits the employment of otherwise qualified LGBTQ+ people at SPU if an LGBTQ+ applicant or employee is married to, or in a relationship with, someone of the same sex.”
They “brush aside” the widespread harm they inflict on the most vulnerable students and employees, and “treat the university and its assets like a personal weapon and war chest to fight the sectarian battles of the Free Methodist Church USA,” the lawsuit states. “They intend to continue down their ideologically driven path of destruction, even if their conduct causes the university to implode financially and structurally.”
Meanwhile, in response to a probe from the Washington State Attorney General’s Office, Seattle Pacific University’s interim president Pete Menjares asked a federal court to “defend its right” to keep internal communications private and to “protect our freedom to hire employees on the basis of religion.”
This story was originally published September 14, 2022 at 3:17 PM with the headline "Faith-based university bans employees in same-sex marriages, Washington lawsuit says."
