HARRISBURG, Pa.—A religious student group claims that Shippensburg University violated its free-speech rights by threatening to shut it down because it requires members to be Christians and its president to be a man.

The Christian Fellowship of Shippensburg University alleges in a federal lawsuit filed Wednesday that the state-owned university violated a 2004 settlement of a separate lawsuit over the school's student code of conduct.

In that earlier case, a civil liberties group sued the university over a provision in the student code that prohibited "acts of intolerance" including racist, sexist and homophobic speech. University officials said they would revise the code after a federal judge granted a preliminary injunction in 2004 barring the enforcement of that provision.

Steven Aden, a lawyer for the Alliance Defense Fund Center for Academic Freedom, said the latest lawsuit stems from Christian Fellowship's expulsion from campus by the university's Student Senate in February in a dispute over its membership and leadership requirements,

The Student Senate's vice president later told the group that it could resume operating as a recognized student organization, but members still worry about the prospect of further sanctions, Aden said.

"The club is under this cloud of suspicion, whereby their practices are being monitored to make sure they don't step out of line," Aden said.

The Washington D.C.-based ADF center, which filed the

lawsuit, was not involved in the earlier case.

Christian Fellowship has been recognized by the university since the early 1970s.

University spokesman Peter Gigliotti said Thursday that university officials had not seen the lawsuit, but they were reviewing the allegations.