Virginia’s blatant discrimination

Most college-bound students face an array of challenges: choosing a major, chasing a career path, and keeping their options open for what may pique their interest along the way. And for many, there’s another difficulty—finding tuition assistance and state grants to keep pace with skyrocketing higher education costs.

Four college students navigating these questions in Virginia recently discovered that some degrees are more favored than others. Virginia operates several public grant programs for college students attending private nonprofit schools. In the eyes of commonwealth officials, though, some fields of study are right when it comes to students applying for the grant money, while others are wrong and do not qualify.

But the only thing that’s really wrong here is Virginia’s blatant discrimination.

Cameron Johnson, Luke Thomas, Trace Stevens, and Bethany Hall, college students at Liberty University, have all suddenly found themselves at the center of two cases before the U.S. Supreme Court after choosing degrees that fall under Virginia’s “too religious to receive funding” category.

Indeed, the students were excluded from educational grants worth thousands of dollars per year based solely on their chosen religious degrees, even though Virginia funds other near-identical religious degrees.

Cameron, a 2025 high-school graduate who majors in pastoral leadership, was denied a Virginia Tuition Assistance Grant because of his chosen major. And Luke plans on majoring in music and worship, but that major is also ineligible for VTAG.

Bethany’s story is similar. She initially qualified for the VTAG program, but when she changed her major from music education to youth ministries and then to music and worship, Viriginia disqualified her because those majors are too religious.

The commonwealth has drawn a line between which types of religious study it approves and which ones are ineligible. For instance, the government will help fund a degree in “Christian Studies” but not “Biblical Studies.” Similarly, “Religion: Christian Ministries” and “Religion: Evangelism” are eligible, but “Youth Ministries” is not.

These distinctions are arbitrary, and that is a problem. The government shouldn’t deny publicly available benefits because a student’s major is the “wrong” kind of religious in the eyes of the government.

The VTAG program isn’t the only problem. A grant program for members of the Virginia National Guard is even worse. Trace’s situation illustrates this. He is a graduate student and a 2nd Lieutenant in the Virginia Army National Guard who is challenging the Virginia Department of Military Affairs’ similarly unconstitutional policy. During his undergraduate program, his major was one of the religious options eligible for VTAG, but the Department of Military Affairs still denied him a National Guard grant because, in the department’s view, his major was too religious. And although he is working to become a chaplain in the guard, the department refuses to give him a grant to help him pay for the master’s degree that he needs to attain that chaplain position. That is supposed to make sense?

The commonwealth is violating the First Amendment rights of each of these students. That’s religious discrimination, pure and simple, which is why Alliance Defending Freedom and the National Legal Foundation asked the U.S. Supreme Court to hear these students’ cases.

Virginia should know better.

The nation’s high court has already said—three different times in the last nine years—that when the government offers public benefits, it cannot exclude some people because of their religious character or choices. Indeed, the Supreme Court called such religious discrimination “odious to our Constitution.”

At the end of the day, these cases are about far more than government grants—they’re about whether state officials can treat people of faith as second class. Cameron, Luke, Trace, and Bethany aren’t asking for special treatment. They’re asking to be treated the same as every other eligible student who pursues their chosen major and still participates in the program.

Christians and other people of faith must have equal access to public benefits. Period. The government has no right determining whether college courses are “too religious” to receive state grants. The students we represent must be free to select the religious study of their choosing, while benefiting from the same financial assistance available to their peers.

Virginia’s message to these students is blunt: Choose a major we approve of or lose the grant. That is an impossible demand for Cameron, Luke, Trace, and Bethany, who believe God called them to their programs at Liberty University. Pressuring them to give up that calling to receive generally available government support is exactly the kind of coercion the First Amendment seeks to prevent.

The government cannot steer students away from religious pursuits through discriminatory gatekeeping. We’re hoping the Supreme Court agrees to hear these cases and opens the door for people of faith to participate in these programs on equal footing.