MURRIETA -- A lawsuit claiming the UC system discriminates against Christian beliefs by rejecting some private Christian schools' courses for college-entrance credit may proceed, a federal judge ruled Tuesday, rejecting the university's argument that the case should be tossed.

U.S. District Judge S. James Otero's ruling states that claims in the lawsuit are worth pursuing. The suit was filed by Calvary Chapel Christian School in Murrieta, six of its students and the Association of Christian Schools International, which represents more than 4,000 religious schools nationwide.

"Members of the Supreme Court have articulated on various occasions that a university's decisions regarding admissions policies deserve a measure of sanctity," Otero stated. "However … the freedom that a university enjoys to determine its own admissions policies is not without limit."

On Tuesday, the Murrieta students' attorney hailed the ruling as a crucial victory validating the lawsuit, while a spokesman for the University of California system dismissed the decision as "no surprise" and said the 10-campus university system should prevail in the final verdict.

The lawsuit contends the system discriminates against Christian schools by rejecting some courses for college-entrance credit because they include or are based upon Christian viewpoints, citing several English, science and elective courses rejected by the system in the last few years.

Part of those claims include that the UC system is denying some science courses that use popular Christian science textbooks because its officials don't approve of the fact that they espouse creationism, or the belief that a supreme being created the universe.

UC system officials have maintained that there is no such bias against Christian academics and that they just want students admitted into the system to be prepared for its academic rigors.

"We will vigorously defend ourselves," Ricardo Vasquez, a spokesman for the UC system, said in response to the ruling. "We believe we have not been discriminating and we believe that ultimately we'll prevail because the facts are on our side."

Murrieta attorney Robert Tyler, who is representing Calvary Chapel Christian School and its six students, hailed the ruling as a "great initial victory."

"The facts of the case as presented so far reveal the UC school system has engaged in discriminating against Christian schools based on their viewpoints and not based on objective standards," Tyler said, adding that he expects the case to go to trial in six months to a year.

None of the six students named in the lawsuit was available for comment Tuesday, Tyler said.

He said that of those six students, two graduated in June, one of whom went to a private Christian university and another who went to a junior college to take part in their basketball program. The remaining four are applying to the UC system, he said.

The UC system's Vasquez said that nine seniors from Calvary Chapel Christian School in Murrieta were enrolled in UC universities and start classes this fall. He said their enrollment illustrates that the school's students have access to the system, which its officials say is the largest public research university system in the world.

The crux of the lawsuit centers around several rejected courses submitted by Calvary Chapel for credit into the UC system, such as "Christianity's Influence on America," which a UC document cited as "too narrow (and) too specialized" as reasons for not approving the course.

Another Calvary Chapel course rejected by the UC system was "Christianity and Morality in American Literature." The class was described in documents as an "intensive study in textual criticism aimed at elevating the ability of students to engage literary works." Authors students would have studied included Mark Twain, Edgar Allen Poe, Benjamin Franklin and C.S. Lewis.

Otero summarized the lawsuit by stating that it argues the UC system is violating the school's and students' First Amendment rights through "content regulation, viewpoint discrimination, prescription of orthodoxy and chilling of rights."

"Fundamentally, the government is forbidden from engaging in regulation of speech based on its substantive content or its message," he stated.

Contact staff writer Jennifer Kabbany at (951) 676-4315, Ext. 2625, or jkabbany@californian.com. To comment on this article, go to www.californian.com.