Appeals court upholds verdict over treatment by Y.

PROVO — A federal appeals court has rejected a claim by a former Brigham Young University student that BYU's campus police mixed government and religion during litigation of a lawsuit he filed in 2002.

Aaron Raiser, 45, sued BYU in 2002 alleging mistreatment by campus police officers. In a motion to dismiss the complaint, BYU assistant general counsel Erik Davis wrote that Raiser had made students and faculty feel threatened or uneasy and exhibited bizarre or suspicious behavior.

Claiming the assertion was malicious and false, Raiser sued BYU and its owner, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, in 2004.

Raiser argued he was damaged by the Utah law that allows BYU to maintain a state-certified campus police force, claiming that the alleged "state/church entanglement" allowed private information about him to be exchanged between his church leaders, the university and its police force.

Wednesday's ruling by the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a previous ruling in a Utah district court.

"Nothing in the record suggests that Mr. Raiser's injury from the alleged exchange of private information between BYU and its police force occurred because of any entanglement between government and religion," wrote 10th Circuit Judge Harris Hartz. "As far as this case was concerned, the relationship between BYU and its police force was indistinguishable from that between a secular private university and its police force.

"There simply was no religious component to the police force's conduct. Mr. Raiser's argument amounts to saying that liability arises under the establishment clause for any conduct by the police force of a university controlled by a religious denomination."

The court denied Raiser's claim that BYU breached his privacy when it stated in a court brief that Raiser suffered from bipolar schizophrenia. His father testified the family was the likely source of information about his condition, Hartz wrote in his opinion.

Raiser's father said the family committed Aaron Raiser to a psychiatric hospital in Ohio in 1991 after he had graduated from BYU and served an LDS Church mission, according to the 10th Circuit ruling. Raiser escaped from the hospital and traveled to Provo. The family contacted BYU Police later that year.

In 1992, Raiser met with Eugene Bramhall, his LDS stake president and BYU's general counsel, to seek a university-required "ecclesiastical endorsement" to attend BYU as a graduate student.