## Facts

- HEB Ministries, Inc., Southern Bible Institute, and Hispanic Bible Institute operated private religious postsecondary programs focused on Bible and ministry training.
- The schools described themselves as “seminaries” and awarded credentials labeled with academic degree terms (e.g., associate, bachelor, master, doctor) as recognition of religious education and training.
- The schools did not obtain a certificate of authority or board-approved accreditation under Texas Education Code subchapter G, which regulates private postsecondary institutions and restricted certain academic terminology.
- The Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board determined the schools were using protected degree and institutional terminology without authorization, assessed administrative penalties, and sought injunctions to stop degree conferral and use of “seminary” and related terms.
- The schools sought declaratory relief, asserting that applying the statutory restrictions to religious schools violated the Free Exercise and Establishment Clauses and analogous protections in the Texas Constitution.

## Issues

1. Whether Texas may condition a religious school’s use of the term “seminary” on compliance with state approval or academic standards consistent with federal and Texas religious-liberty protections.
2. Whether Texas may prohibit a religious school from using academic degree terms (or equivalents) to denote attainment in religious education and training absent state authorization.
3. Whether the State’s interest in preventing public deception and “degree mills” justifies these restrictions when applied to religious institutions’ self-description and religious credentialing.

## Decision

- The Supreme Court of Texas reversed the court of appeals and remanded for further proceedings.
- The Court held that, as applied here, Texas could not require a private religious school to meet prescribed standards before it may call itself a “seminary.”
- The Court further held that Texas could not, on the same basis, bar the schools from using academic degree terminology (or equivalents) to recognize attainment in religious education and training.
- The decision was fragmented, with separate concurrences and partial dissents, but the judgment favored the religious institutions and limited enforcement against their religious terminology and religious credentialing.

## Legal Principles

- Government may not control a religious institution’s self-definition in matters closely bound to religious identity and governance, such as whether it may describe itself as a “seminary.”
- Conditioning a religious institution’s conferral of religious credentials on compliance with state academic oversight can constitute impermissible interference with religious exercise and internal religious affairs.
- Although the State has a legitimate interest in preventing deception and regulating academic terminology in the marketplace, that interest does not permit measures that require the State to police religious meaning or to impose state standards as a prerequisite to religious status and religious recognition.
- Federal and Texas constitutional religious-liberty protections were treated as coextensive in application for the court’s analysis of the challenged enforcement against religious institutions.

## Conclusion

The Texas Supreme Court held that Texas could not apply its private postsecondary regulatory scheme to require religious schools to satisfy state academic-approval conditions before using “seminary” and degree terminology to describe religious training and credentials, and it reversed and remanded for further proceedings.


HEB Ministries, Inc. v. Texas Higher Educ. Coordinating Bd., 235 S.W.3d 627 (Tex. 2007)