According to a recent Action News article, the environment may soon become considerably less friendly for dominionist "frat" frontgroups in the University of Florida system:

A Christian fraternity alleging discrimination is taking the University of Florida to court.

Beta Upsilon Chi's lawsuit says the university refuses to recognize it as a registered student group.

According to the lawsuit filed in federal court in Gainesville, school officials told the group it can't be registered because only Christian men are eligible for membership.

The organization that governs the university's Greek system prohibits religious discrimination.

Attorney Timothy Tracey of the Alliance Defense Fund says the group's First Amendment rights are being violated and that the university is imposing double standards.

The lawsuit says the fraternity is deprived of benefits including access to meeting space and the ability to advertise and recruit members on campus.

For a bit of backgrounder, Beta Upsilon Chi is a frat that promotes the use of abusive "cell groups"--in other words, it operates much like Campus Crusade, only organised as a fraternity. It was set up explicitly as a frat to serve the dominionist "parallel economy"; most of its base is in the Southeast US, and practically all the staff are either Aggies or alumni of Texas Christian University (which has been targeted for steeplejacking expressly by BYX members; TCU is a college associated with the Disciples of Christ, but is fairly ecumenical in its alumni).

This is also not the first legal case of this kind that Beta Upsilon Chi has been involved in--they tried the exact same tactic against University of Georgia when they refused to allow them on campus (under a similar anti-discrimination rule)--they were eventually forced to change their rules.

Other "Christian" frat groups have tried legal challenges--Alpha Iota Omega, a frontgroup of Maranatha/MSI/Every Nation, has done similar legal challenges over its frat status being revoked by University of North Carolina due to a similar anti-discrimination rule (it should be noted that Maranatha was banned from several state college campuses due to its coercive behaviour), and a group calling itself Christian Legal Society (which is effectively a dominionist law group) has filed at least two separate lawsuits of this sort (against Southern Illinois University and the University of California school system).

As the setting-up of "frat" front-groups is increasingly common among dominionist groups (including Chi Alpha, an Assemblies of God frontgroup founded by John Ashcroft's dad (yes, *that* John Ashcroft) which counts among the earliest of the known Assemblies frontgroups), it will be interesting to see which way the courts decide...and how much noise dominionist groups will make if things don't go their way.