Yeshiva University Lawsuit: From Supreme Court to Hareni’s Collapse

The Yeshiva University LGBTQ lawsuit began in April 2021, when a student group called the YU Pride Alliance sued the school for refusing to recognize an undergraduate LGBTQ club, and it has never cleanly ended. State courts ordered the university to grant recognition. The U.S. Supreme Court declined to intervene. A March 2025 settlement created an officially recognized club called Hareni. Fifty days later, the university’s senior rabbis dissolved it. As of mid-2025, no official LGBTQ undergraduate club exists at Yeshiva, and the original plaintiffs are reportedly weighing new legal action.¹

Who Sued, and What They Wanted

The YU Pride Alliance and four students — Molly Meisels, Amitai Miller, Doniel Weinreich, and an anonymous plaintiff — filed suit on April 26, 2021, in New York County Supreme Court. The complaint named Yeshiva University, its president Rabbi Ari Berman, and its vice provost of student affairs.² The students were represented by Emery Celli Brinckerhoff Abady Ward & Maazel, with partner Katherine Rosenfeld as lead counsel.³

The suit alleged discrimination based on gender, sexual orientation, and association under the New York City Human Rights Law. It asked the court to order official recognition of the Pride Alliance and sought punitive damages and attorneys’ fees.² Students had spent years asking for undergraduate recognition through internal advocacy, including a 2019 march called “We, Too, Are YU.”⁴ Yeshiva had already recognized LGBTQ organizations at three of its graduate schools for more than twenty-five years, but its undergraduate program had held a different line rooted in Orthodox tradition.⁵

The Core Legal Question

The case turned on whether Yeshiva counts as a “religious corporation” under New York law and can therefore claim an exemption from the city’s ban on sexual-orientation discrimination in public accommodations.

The plaintiffs pointed to Yeshiva’s 1969 charter amendment, which redefined the school as a “non-denominational institution of higher learning” — a status that allowed it to receive state funding and secular accreditation.⁵ Rosenfeld argued the university could not both take that status and “pick and choose which New York City laws apply to it.” The complaint also noted that in 1995, the university’s own lawyers had advised that under city law, it “cannot ban gay student clubs.”³

Yeshiva, represented by the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, argued that the First Amendment’s free exercise, free speech, and free association protections barred the government from forcing a religious institution to endorse views at odds with its faith. Becket attorney Eric Baxter called the refusal to recognize the club “essential” to Yeshiva’s Torah-centered mission. The university also invoked the church autonomy doctrine from the Supreme Court’s 1952 decision in Kedroff v. St. Nicholas Cathedral, which bars government interference in the internal governance of a religious body.⁶

How the State Courts Ruled

On June 24, 2022, Judge Lynn R. Kotler of New York County Supreme Court ruled for the students. She found Yeshiva did not qualify as a religious corporation under the city’s Human Rights Law because it was incorporated under the state’s Education Law rather than the Religious Corporations Law, and because its charter described it as non-denominational. The court also held that requiring recognition of a student group did not violate the First Amendment, noting that Yeshiva already recognized LGBTQ organizations at its graduate schools. Judge Kotler issued a permanent injunction ordering official status for the YU Pride Alliance.⁵

In August 2022, the Appellate Division, First Department, affirmed. The panel called the city’s Human Rights Law a “neutral and generally applicable law” and found that recognizing a student club “does not suggest approval or endorsement by the university.”⁵

What the Supreme Court Did

Yeshiva filed an emergency application with Justice Sonia Sotomayor on August 29, 2022, asking the U.S. Supreme Court to block the trial court’s injunction. On September 9, she temporarily stayed the order. Five days later, on September 14, the full Court denied the stay 5–4 and vacated Sotomayor’s temporary order.⁷

The majority told the university to exhaust its options in the New York state courts first, either by seeking expedited merits review at the Appellate Division or by filing a corrected motion for leave to appeal to the New York Court of Appeals. The denial was “without prejudice,” leaving the door open for Yeshiva to return later.⁷

Justice Samuel Alito dissented, joined by Justices Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch, and Amy Coney Barrett. He called the case a “shocking development” involving “a State’s imposition of its own mandatory interpretation of scripture,” and wrote that “the loss of First Amendment rights for even a short period constitutes irreparable harm.” The dissent argued the city’s law was not truly neutral because it exempted secular groups like the American Legion while denying exemptions to religious institutions, and should therefore face strict scrutiny.⁸

The Club Suspension and Two Years of Delay

Within days of the Supreme Court’s denial, Yeshiva suspended all undergraduate clubs rather than comply with the injunction. President Berman said faith-based universities have “the right to set up clubs consistent with their religious traditions.”⁹ On September 22, 2022, the university and the Pride Alliance agreed to stay the injunction while the case moved through the appeals process, and clubs were restored after the Jewish holidays.¹⁰

In October 2022, Yeshiva announced its own LGBTQ support club, “Kol Yisrael Areivim,” endorsed by senior rabbi Hershel Schachter and designed to work within Jewish law. The Pride Alliance called it a “sham” and a “desperate stunt,” noting no students had been consulted and it had no members.¹¹ The club never actually launched.¹²

In January 2023, Yeshiva sought leave to appeal to the New York Court of Appeals. That motion was denied on March 30, 2023.¹³ The case then stalled for nearly two years, caught in a discovery dispute over the plaintiffs’ health, financial, and employment records.¹⁴

The March 2025 Settlement and Hareni

On March 20, 2025, the parties announced a settlement ending all litigation. It created a new officially recognized club called Hareni, from the Hebrew declaration “I hereby take upon myself to fulfill the positive commandment: love your fellow as yourself.”¹⁵

Hareni was to operate with the same rights as other student organizations: university funding, campus events, advertising through school email listservs and bulletin boards, participation in student fairs, and public use of the term “LGBTQ+” in its materials.¹⁵ In exchange, the club agreed to “operate in accordance with the approved guidelines of Yeshiva University’s senior rabbis” and in the “spirit of a collaborative and mutually supportive campus culture.”¹⁶ The agreement runs five years, with Rabbi Yaakov Neuburger designated as the club’s halachic authority and all activities requiring his approval.¹⁷

Former YU Pride Alliance co-presidents Schneur Friedman and Hayley Goldberg transitioned into leading Hareni.¹⁴ Friedman called the deal “a huge step in terms of normalizing being queer at YU.” Rachael Fried of Jewish Queer Youth called it a “historic moment for queer Jews and for the Orthodox community.”¹⁵

Why Hareni Collapsed in Fifty Days

The university’s senior rabbis, who had largely been excluded from the settlement negotiations, moved against the club almost immediately. On April 10, 2025, the roshei yeshiva issued an edict banning “Pride flags, symbols, and emojis” along with the term “Pride Club,” and ordered that every club flyer carry a disclaimer stating the club upheld “traditional halachic standards of sexual morality” — defined as requiring celibacy for gay students. Rabbi Mayer Twersky called the settlement “a staggering, sacrilegious, self-destructive travesty.”¹

The student leaders refused. “What we will not be doing as a club is writing the egregious statement … on our posters and communications,” Goldberg and Friedman said publicly.¹⁸

On May 8, 2025, Hareni’s counsel sent a letter accusing the university of violating the settlement through censorship, strict oversight, and bans on social events not imposed on other clubs. The next day, the roshei yeshiva ordered the Office of Student Life to dissolve Hareni. Their unsigned memo said the club was “operating as a pride club under a different name” and was “antithetical to the Torah values of the yeshiva.”¹⁹

The university’s legal counsel, Gene Schaerr, gave several specific reasons: students had failed to follow rabbinic guidance, planned social events despite being told not to, refused the morality disclaimer, kept Pride Alliance imagery on the club Instagram account, and held an unauthorized off-campus event at Jewish Queer Youth’s headquarters using the Yeshiva name.¹⁹ The students argued the university was imposing rules the settlement never contemplated and that the agreement’s arbitration clause, not unilateral dissolution, was the proper way to resolve disputes.¹

The club lasted exactly fifty days. Friedman told the Hareni WhatsApp group that members would “continue as though we were not” discontinued, hosting events and safe spaces informally. “Hareni exists because we exist, and we are not going anywhere.”¹⁹

Where Things Stand Now

As of the most recent reporting in mid-2025, no official LGBTQ student club exists at Yeshiva University’s undergraduate campus. The original alumni plaintiffs are reportedly weighing new legal action for what they see as a breach of the March 2025 settlement. The settlement’s arbitration clause has been cited by the student side as the appropriate mechanism, but no formal arbitration or new court filings have been reported.¹ Former club leaders continue to maintain an informal community on campus.

The dispute also produced fallout inside the institution. A student newspaper poll found most undergraduates disapproved of the initial decision to recognize the club, and several long-time board members and major donors resigned or declined to renew their terms.¹²⁰ By settling in March, the parties avoided a Supreme Court ruling on whether religious universities can claim exemptions from local anti-discrimination laws. The fifty-day life of Hareni suggests that ruling may still be coming, one way or another.

1
The Forward. Why Yeshiva University LGBTQ Club Collapsed
2
Civil Rights Litigation Clearinghouse. YU Pride Alliance v Yeshiva University
3
YU Commentator. YU and Administrators Sued for LGBTQ Discrimination by YU Pride Alliance Students and Alumni
4
YU Observer. The Pride Alliance: An Alternative Angle
5
NY Courts. YU Pride Alliance v Yeshiva Univ, 211 AD3d 562
6
Vox. Supreme Court Yeshiva University YU Pride Religious Liberty First Amendment LGBTQ
7
Supreme Court of the United States. Yeshiva University v YU Pride Alliance, 22A184
8
Cornell Law Institute. Yeshiva University v YU Pride Alliance, 22A184
9
Higher Ed Dive. Yeshiva University Shelves Undergraduate Clubs Instead of Recognizing LGBTQ Organization
10
Higher Ed Dive. Yeshiva University Will Restart Clubs Without Recognizing LGBTQ Organization
11
Jewish Telegraphic Agency. Yeshiva University, Fighting LGBTQ Club, Launches One of Its Own
12
YU Commentator. Hareni Club Protocols Settlement Details Released Club to Follow Approved Guidelines of Announced 2022 Club
13
Americans United for Separation of Church and State. YU Pride Alliance v Yeshiva University
14
YU Commentator. YU and Pride Alliance Reach Settlement Ceasing All Litigation and Establishing a New Club Hareni
15
Inside Higher Ed. Yeshiva University Settles LGBTQ Student Club Lawsuit
16
ECBAWM. ECBAWM Secures Landmark Agreement for LGBTQ Students in Lawsuit Against Yeshiva University
17
Yeshiva University. Hareni FAQs
18
Jewish Telegraphic Agency. Yeshiva University Rescinds Approval for LGBTQ Student Club
19
YU Observer. YU Roshei Yeshiva Direct OSL to Discontinue Newly Formed Hareni Club Citing Values Antithetical to School
20
YU Commentator. Explaining the Yeshiva University v YU Pride Alliance Settlement