A Virginia college student who lost her tuition assistance after switching to a worship-related major is now asking the Supreme Court to overturn a 22-year-old precedent that lets states deny aid to students whose degrees are deemed too religious.

Bethany Hall, a student at Liberty University, filed a petition for a writ of certiorari this week through a coalition of legal organizations challenging the Court's 2004 decision in Locke v. Davey. Hall had been receiving funds through the Virginia Tuition Assistance Grant Program, a state-funded program open to students at private colleges, until she changed her major from music education to music and worship. Virginia cut her off. The 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals sided with the state, citing Locke as controlling law.

Now her attorneys want the justices to revisit that precedent directly, arguing the legal ground beneath it has collapsed. Alliance Defending Freedom, First Liberty Institute, the law firm Troutman Pepper Locke, and the National Legal Foundation filed the petition on Hall's behalf, The Christian Post reported.

The case, Hall v. Fleming, asks a straightforward question: Can a state offer a benefit to every student pursuing a secular degree and then yank it away the moment that student picks a major with a religious component? Hall's lawyers say no, and they argue the Supreme Court itself has spent the last seven years saying no in every adjacent context.

Three rulings chipped away at Locke, but never overturned it

The petition leans heavily on a trio of Supreme Court decisions handed down after Locke v. Davey. In Trinity Lutheran Church v. Comer (2017), the Court ruled Missouri could not exclude a church from a secular aid program that helped resurface playgrounds simply because the applicant was a religious institution. In Espinoza v. Montana Department of Revenue (2020), the justices struck down Montana's exclusion of religious schools from a state tax credit program. And in Carson v. Makin (2022), the Court held that Maine violated the Constitution by barring families from using tuition-program funds at religious schools.

Each decision narrowed the space in which Locke can operate. But none overruled it. The petition makes that point bluntly.

From the filing itself:

"Only this Court can overrule Locke, and there is every reason for this Court to overturn that erroneous decision now. Locke was wrong when it was decided, and this Court's subsequent caselaw has further eviscerated its fatally flawed foundation."

The petition adds that because Locke remains on the books, "many States' education-funding programs continue to treat disfavored religious degrees worse than all secular studies, unconstitutionally marginalizing people of faith." That is the practical consequence Hall's attorneys want the Court to confront: a precedent that lower courts still enforce even as the Supreme Court's own reasoning has moved in the opposite direction.

The Supreme Court's upcoming term already includes several religious liberty disputes, and a grant of certiorari in Hall would add another major test to that docket.

Josh Davey lost his own case in 2004, now he represents Hall

One detail gives the petition an unusual personal dimension. Josh Davey, the attorney at Troutman Pepper Locke who is part of Hall's legal team, is the same student whose tuition assistance was denied by Washington state more than two decades ago, the student in Locke v. Davey itself.

Davey said in a statement:

"Twenty-two years ago, the Supreme Court's decision allowed states to single out students like me because our course of study related to our religious calling. I am hopeful that the Court will correct that decision and treat students like Bethany equally."

That an attorney who lost at the Supreme Court as a college student now represents a new student challenging the same precedent underscores how long this legal question has lingered, and how much the Court's own jurisprudence has shifted in the interim.

Religious liberty cases at the federal level have multiplied in recent years. A federal appeals court recently revived a Christian therapist's First Amendment challenge to a Washington state counseling restriction, reflecting broader judicial willingness to hear free exercise claims that would have faced steeper odds a decade ago.

What Locke actually held, and what Scalia warned

The original Locke v. Davey decision, written by Chief Justice William Rehnquist, ruled 7-2 that Washington state's exclusion of students pursuing religious studies degrees from state-funded tuition assistance did not violate the First Amendment's Free Exercise Clause. Rehnquist wrote that Washington's "disfavor of religion" did not impose "criminal nor civil sanctions on any type of religious service or rite" and did not "deny to ministers the right to participate in the political affairs of the community."

He concluded: "The State has merely chosen not to fund a distinct category of instruction."

Justice Antonin Scalia, joined by Justice Clarence Thomas, dissented sharply. Scalia argued that "when the State makes a public benefit generally available, that benefit becomes part of the baseline against which burdens on religion are measured." He warned that "when the State withholds that benefit from some individuals solely on the basis of religion, it violates the Free Exercise Clause no less than if it had imposed a special tax."

Hall's petition essentially asks the current Court to adopt Scalia's position. The three intervening decisions, Trinity Lutheran, Espinoza, and Carson, moved substantially in that direction without formally overruling Locke. The result is a legal landscape where states cannot exclude religious schools from public benefit programs but can still exclude individual students whose majors are religious in character. Hall's attorneys call that distinction incoherent.

Steven Fitschen: Virginia funds music but not music and worship

Steven Fitschen of the National Legal Foundation, one of the organizations behind the petition, framed the issue in concrete terms in a statement published Wednesday.

"It is odious to our Constitution for a state to fund a degree in music but refuse to fund a degree in music & worship. The Free Exercise clause is meant to encourage and even prefer religion."

Fitschen added: "But Virginia's decision to deny funding based upon religious use is the type of hostility toward religion rejected by the First Amendment."

John Bursch, senior counsel at Alliance Defending Freedom, characterized the state's position as "religious discrimination," arguing it is unconstitutional for the government to deny publicly available benefits "because a student's major is too religious."

The case arrives at a moment when the Justice Department has strengthened federal religious liberty guidance, adding new parental rights protections. Whether the executive branch's posture influences the Court's decision to take the case remains to be seen, but the broader policy environment has moved toward stronger free exercise protections across multiple branches of government.

Hall's case distills a simple question the Court has avoided

Several important details remain unclear. The Supreme Court has not yet indicated whether it will grant certiorari and hear the case. The specific dollar amount of tuition assistance Hall lost has not been disclosed. The respondent, identified only as "Fleming" in the petition's case caption, is not described in available reporting. And Hall herself has not made any public statement.

But the legal question is clean. Virginia offers tuition grants to students at private colleges. Hall qualified, until her major included the word "worship." The state drew a line between secular music and religious music, and Hall landed on the wrong side of it.

Challenges to government restrictions on religious expression continue to surface across the country. A Native American church recently petitioned the Supreme Court to block a city from demolishing a sacred worship site, and a Minnesota city faces a federal lawsuit after citing a Christian street preacher for holding a pro-life sign. Each case tests a different facet of religious liberty, but they share a common thread: government drawing lines that burden religious practice while leaving secular equivalents untouched.

Hall's petition asks whether the Constitution permits a state to tell a student she can study music on the taxpayer's dime, but not music and worship. After Trinity Lutheran, Espinoza, and Carson, the honest answer ought to be obvious. The only question is whether the Court is ready to say it plainly.