## Facts

- Nassau County Community College (NCC), a public community college, offered a course titled “Family Living and Human Sexuality” (PED 251).
- Four plaintiffs—three county residents and one non-resident—challenged the course as outside observers; they were not enrolled in PED 251 when suit was filed.
- Plaintiffs alleged the course disparaged “traditional Jewish and Christian, and particularly Catholic” sexual tenets and sought to replace them with an “anti-religious sexual ethic.”
- Plaintiffs asserted the course used exercises, self-evaluations, and audiovisual materials intended to coerce students into changing their religious beliefs.
- Plaintiffs initially asserted multiple federal and state claims, but later discontinued several by stipulation and had others dismissed in prior rulings.
- The only remaining claim sought declaratory relief under the Establishment Clause, contending that offering PED 251 was unconstitutional.

## Issues

1. Whether a public community college violates the Establishment Clause by offering a sexuality and family-life course that allegedly disparages certain religious teachings and promotes an opposing ethical viewpoint.
2. Whether the course’s instructional methods and materials constitute unconstitutional governmental coercion or endorsement of hostility toward religion in the higher-education classroom.

## Decision

- The court entered judgment for defendants and rejected the Establishment Clause challenge.
- The court found PED 251 to be a secular, educational course within the legitimate scope of a community college curriculum.
- The court concluded the course did not constitute governmental endorsement of an anti-religious creed and did not require students to renounce or affirm any religious or anti-religious belief.
- The court declined to treat pedagogical tools (discussion, self-reflection exercises, and course materials) as unconstitutional coercion in the college setting.
- The court held that instruction conflicting with some religious doctrines, without state-imposed religious penalties or compelled profession of belief, does not establish or inhibit religion.

## Legal Principles

- Public educational institutions may offer secular instruction on morality, relationships, and sexuality even when course content conflicts with particular religious doctrines.
- Establishment Clause analysis focuses on the course’s objective purpose and effect in context, not solely on a challenger’s characterization of the material.
- A governmental program does not violate the Establishment Clause merely because it is perceived as critical of religiously grounded viewpoints; the Constitution forbids state endorsement, inhibition, or coercion regarding religion, not exposure to contrary ideas in academic instruction.
- Courts should avoid becoming curriculum managers; requiring course content to be tailored to avoid conflict with all religious beliefs risks improper judicial involvement and entanglement with religion.
- In higher education, voluntary enrollment and the absence of compelled affirmation or renunciation of religious belief weigh against claims of unconstitutional coercion.

## Conclusion

The court held that NCC’s PED 251 course was a secular academic offering and that plaintiffs’ objections to its perceived incompatibility with certain religious sexual ethics did not establish an Establishment Clause violation.


Gheta v. Nassau Cnty. Cmty. Coll., 33 F. Supp. 2d 179 (E.D.N.Y. 1999)