WASHINGTON — An ideologically split Supreme Court ruled today that a law school can legally deny recognition to a Christian student group that won't let gays join.

The Court rejected the Christian Legal Society’s effort to get funding and recognition from the University of California's Hastings College of the Law.

The CLS requires that voting members sign a statement of faith and regards "unrepentant participation in or advocacy of a sexually immoral lifestyle" as being inconsistent with that faith.

But Hastings officials said no recognized campus groups may exclude people due to religious belief or sexual orientation.

The Court voted 5-4 to uphold lower court decisions which found that the Christian group's First Amendment rights of association, free speech and free exercise were not violated by the college's decision.

"In requiring CLS — in common with all other student organizations — to choose between welcoming all students and forgoing the benefits of official recognition, we hold, Hastings did not transgress constitutional limitations," said Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who wrote the majority opinion in Christian Legal Society v. Martinez for the Court's liberals and moderate Anthony Kennedy. "CLS, it bears emphasis, seeks not parity with other organizations, but a preferential exemption from Hastings' policy."

Justice Samuel Alito wrote a strong dissent for the Court's conservatives, saying the opinion was "a serious setback for freedom of expression in this country."

"Our proudest boast of our free speech jurisprudence is that we protect the freedom of express 'the thought that we hate,'" Alito wrote in the 36-page dissent. "Today's decision rests on a very different principle: no freedom of expression that offends prevailing standards of political correctness in our country's institutions of higher learning."