Administrators at the University of North Carolina (UNC) in September investigated a Christian singing group that expelled one of its members over his views on homosexuality. A month later, the school cleared Psalm 100 of any wrongdoing. Administrators said they could find no evidence the group violated the school's nondiscrimination policy, which allows official student organizations to limit both membership and leadership to students who agree with their beliefs.

Legal experts, who helped hammer out the policy after winning several court battles on behalf of campus Christian organizations, say UNC's policy is unique in the protection it offers to religious groups. But that protection could be short-lived.

UNC administrators are reviewing the policy. If UNC follows the lead of other schools, it could drop protections for religious groups and make it harder for them to meet on campus.

Jonathan Sauls, dean of students at UNC and co-chair of the policy review committee, said school administrators have no game plan for a new policy, but they want to see what the options are: "We haven't gone into this with the perspective that it's broke, so we need to fix it."

The current policy has just two clauses. The first prohibits groups from restricting membership or participation based on age, race and religious affiliation, among other factors. The second clause offers an exemption for belief-based groups: "Student organizations that select their members on the basis of commitment to a set of beliefs (e.g., religious or political beliefs) may limit membership and participation in the organization to students who, upon individual inquiry, affirm that they support the organization's goals and agree with its beliefs."

The school adopted the policy in response to a directive issued by a federal court in 2005, but the 2010 Supreme Court ruling in CLS [Christian Legal Society] v. Martinez has changed the legal landscape, he said.

In CLS v. Martinez, the high court ruled that the University of California Hastings College of the Law could deny a Christian group recognition as an official campus organization because it wanted leaders to sign a statement of faith. The school claimed it had a policy that required groups to accept all people, regardless of beliefs, as both members and leaders. The court said such an "all-comers" policy would not violate any group's constitutional rights.

Several schools have cited the CLS v. Martinez ruling as the foundation for new nondiscrimination policies that ban groups from selecting leaders or members based on beliefs. The Student Association Senate at the State University of New York at Buffalo demanded InterVarsity Christian Fellowship submit a new constitution that does not include leadership requirements. Administrators at Vanderbilt University have made the same request of several Christian groups, even though as a private school it's not bound by the Supreme Court ruling. And San Diego State University used the CLS v. Martinez ruling to tell two Christian Greek organizations they could not select leaders based on their beliefs, although administrators acknowledged nonreligious campus groups had selective membership requirements.

It's not surprising that UNC would follow suit, said Azhar Majeed, associate director for legal and public advocacy for the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education.

"Even before CLS, universities had for the most part prohibited discrimination on the basis of ideas and beliefs," he said. "Now that the Supreme Court has given a different road map, expect more universities to have more expansive policies."

Majeed's group helped litigate the 2005 case that resulted in UNC's current policy, and it sent UNC a letter supporting Psalm 100 during its investigation. Based on past experiences, Majeed was not surprised the school chose not to fight the Psalm 100 case. Administrators would rather make policy changes quietly than in response to a specific incident that generated quite a bit of media attention, he said.

Sauls acknowledged the school did not want to make the possible policy changes a referendum about any specific group, but he insisted he wanted to make the committee's deliberations as transparent as possible. Guests and observers are welcome in the committee's bi-weekly meetings, which include input from various groups that have a stake in the policies, he said.

Since UNC adopted its current nondiscrimination policy seven years ago, no one has filed a complaint about it. Even the Psalm 100 situation did not generate a complaint, Sauls said. School administrators decided to investigate the situation on their own after learning about what happened, he said. Given the lack of protest against the policy, Sauls suggested the school might end up leaving it as is: "Sometimes the perfect solution is not meddling with something. Sometimes the solution can be worse than the perceived problem."