CHARLESTON, W.Va. — If West Virginia University student David Haws had chosen to go to school elsewhere, it's unlikely the Mormon would have been forced to choose between his religion and his state-funded merit scholarship.

"This is not common," said Kim Farah, a spokeswoman for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, in a telephone interview Monday from Utah. "Deferring scholarships until missionaries complete their missions is a common practice that many universities follow."

Farah said in her eight years working in public relations for the church, she'd never heard of a similar case, adding, "and we would have known about it."

Haws is suing the state's PROMISE scholarship board for denying him a leave of absence to serve a church mission for two years. In a lawsuit filed Thursday in federal court in Charleston by the American Civil Liberties Union of West Virginia, Haws claimed violation of his First Amendment right to freely exercise his religion.

Though she could not comment on the nature of the case, Farah said missionary work is essential to young Mormons' lives.

"It's quite important not only to the church itself but also to the young men and women who serve missions," Farah said.

Men serve missions at age 19, and women serve at age 21.

Haws, who is completing the second year of his mission this summer, has been helping disadvantaged people in eastern Nevada, eastern California and western Arizona. The Bridgeport native, a former Bridgeport High School valedictorian, wants to see his scholarship reinstated so that he can continue his education during the 2007 fall semester.

Jack Toney, director of state financial aid programs who oversees PROMISE, said he cannot comment because his office has not seen the lawsuit yet.

Haws, a political science major, would not have been asked to give up his scholarship at a school in Utah, where the LDS Church is based, or in Georgia, where the state-funded merit scholarship movement was born.

The Georgia Student Finance Commission administers that state's student financial aid programs, including the HOPE Scholarship Program. Like West Virginia's PROMISE scholarship, the HOPE scholarship is a state-funded merit scholarship for college.

"Once a student becomes eligible for a HOPE scholarship, they are in the system indefinitely until graduation. In other words, if a student decides to take a leave of absence from school for any reason, they will be allowed to return," said Monet Robinson, a spokeswoman for the Georgia commission.

The University of Utah is a public institution that is comparable to WVU in size; it has 28,619 students while WVU has 27,115. An admission official estimated about half of University of Utah students are LDS, although no data are collected on student religion because the school is publicly funded.