A graduate student at Liberty University has taken her fight over a rescinded federal research grant all the way to the Supreme Court, arguing that the government stripped her funding solely because she attends a Christian school.
Lacey Mase, a doctoral candidate in counselor education at Liberty, filed a petition for certiorari asking the justices to hear her claim that the U.S. Department of Education violated the Free Exercise Clause and the Equal Protection Clause when it revoked a Graduate Assistance in Areas of National Need (GAANN) grant that had already been awarded to her program. The case could set a major precedent on whether the federal government can treat students at religious universities differently from their peers at secular institutions when distributing competitive academic funding.
Liberty University's counselor education program applied for and received a GAANN fellowship grant from the Department of Education. Mase was selected as a fellow under that grant. Just the News reported that the department later rescinded the grant, effectively cutting off Mase's funding.
Mase contends the revocation was not based on academic merit or any deficiency in her program's application. Instead, she argues, the department pulled the grant because of Liberty University's religious character and the faith commitments the school maintains. Her petition frames the government's action as a straightforward case of religious discrimination: Washington approved the funding, then took it back once officials focused on the institution's religious identity.
The petition raises two constitutional claims. First, Mase argues the rescission violated the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment by penalizing her for choosing to pursue her education at a religious university. Under recent Supreme Court precedent, the government generally cannot exclude individuals or institutions from public benefit programs based on religious status or religious exercise.
Second, she presses an Equal Protection claim, asserting that the department treated her differently from similarly situated graduate students at secular schools who received and kept their GAANN funding. The argument is simple: two students in comparable doctoral programs applied through the same federal grant competition, but only the one at the religious school lost her award.
Mase's legal team points to a line of Supreme Court rulings that have progressively narrowed the government's ability to exclude religious organizations from generally available public programs. In Trinity Lutheran Church v. Comer (2017), the Court held that Missouri could not bar a church preschool from a playground resurfacing grant. In Espinoza v. Montana Department of Revenue (2020), the justices struck down a state rule that blocked scholarship funds from flowing to religious schools. And in Carson v. Makin (2022), the Court ruled that Maine could not exclude religious schools from a tuition assistance program available to private secular schools.
Each of those cases reinforced the same principle: once the government opens a benefit to private participants, it cannot slam the door on religious ones just because they are religious.
Before reaching the Supreme Court, Mase's claims were rejected by lower federal courts. The details of those rulings form part of the reason she is now asking the justices to step in. Her petition argues that the lower courts failed to apply the framework the Supreme Court itself established in Trinity Lutheran, Espinoza, and Carson. If the lower court decisions stand, Mase contends, they create a loophole that lets federal agencies do what states have been told they cannot: single out religious institutions and their students for exclusion from competitive grant programs.
The GAANN program channels federal dollars to graduate students in fields the government designates as areas of national need. Counselor education, Mase's field, addresses a well-documented shortage of licensed mental health professionals across the country. GAANN fellowships help universities recruit and support doctoral students who will go on to train the next generation of counselors.
Losing the fellowship did not just cost Mase money. It disrupted her doctoral work at a critical stage. The petition makes clear that the financial and academic consequences were real and immediate, not hypothetical.
The case carries weight well beyond one student's fellowship. Religious colleges and universities compete for federal research and training grants across dozens of disciplines. If the Department of Education can revoke a competitively awarded grant based on an institution's religious identity, every religious school that participates in federal funding programs faces the same vulnerability.
Conservative legal advocates have watched this space closely since the Trinity Lutheran decision. They argue that some federal agencies have been slow to absorb the Court's message and continue to treat religious institutions as second-class participants in public programs. Mase's petition gives the justices a vehicle to address whether that pattern extends to graduate-level research funding administered by the Department of Education.
For the department, the case raises uncomfortable questions about internal grant administration. Investigators will need to determine what criteria officials actually used when they decided to rescind the award. Authorities have not publicly confirmed whether the revocation followed any formal review process or whether Liberty's religious mission was explicitly cited in internal communications.
The petition asks the Supreme Court to resolve whether the Free Exercise Clause and the Equal Protection Clause prohibit the federal government from revoking a previously awarded graduate fellowship grant based on the religious status of the recipient's university. That framing puts the case squarely within the doctrinal line the Court has been building for nearly a decade.
The justices have not yet decided whether to grant certiorari. If they take the case, oral arguments would likely fall in a future term. A ruling in Mase's favor could extend the Trinity Lutheran-Espinoza-Carson framework into federal competitive grant programs for the first time, closing what her attorneys describe as a gap in the Court's religious liberty jurisprudence.
A denial of certiorari, on the other hand, would leave the lower court rulings intact and signal that the justices are not yet ready to push the doctrine further into federal agency conduct.
The Supreme Court will consider the petition in its normal certiorari process. The Department of Education will have the opportunity to file a response brief arguing against review. Interest groups on both sides of the religious liberty debate are expected to weigh in with amicus briefs.
Mase's case has drawn attention from legal organizations that specialize in First Amendment and religious freedom litigation. The outcome could shape how federal agencies interact with religious institutions for years to come, particularly as debates over faith-based participation in government programs intensify.
When the government hands out money for education and then snatches it back because the school prays, that is not neutrality. It is a test the Constitution was written to fail.
