Last week, the court of appeals decided State v. Yencer, ruling, in effect, that Davidson College may not operate its own police department. The ruling calls into serious question the authority of several other private universities’ police departments, meaning that it is of interest not only in Davidson, but also Durham (the website of the Duke police force is here), Winston-Salem (the website of the Wake Forest police department is here), and perhaps at many smaller universities (for example, Meredith College in Raleigh has a police department, as you can see here). The defendant in Yencer was arrested for DWI by a Davidson College officer. She argued that Davidson is a religious institution and that the state therefore cannot delegate police powers to it without violating the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment. Davidson’s police force operates under Chapter 74G of the General Statutes, the Campus Police Act, which allows a “private, nonprofit institution of higher education,” even if “originally established by or affiliated with [a] religious denomination[]” to operate a police department with the approval of the Attorney General’s office. The trial court denied the defendant’s motion, but the court of appeals reversed, applying the excessive entanglement test from Lemon v. Kurtzman, 403 U.S. 602 (1971), and relying on prior cases involving Campbell and Pfeiffer Universities. The court found that the delegation of police powers to Davidson was impermissible given its affiliation with the Presbyterian Church: its statement of purpose says that it is “committed” to the “Christian tradition;” 24 [...]
Faculty Coordinators
