Supreme Court: Christian Group Must Admit Homosexuals

[Sabre86]

AP via Google:

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court says a law school can legally deny recognition to a Christian student group that won't let gays join.

The court on Monday turned away an appeal from the Christian Legal Society, which sued 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 said no recognized campus groups may exclude people due to religious belief or sexual orientation.

The court upheld the lower court rulings saying the Christian group's First Amendment rights of association, free speech and free exercise were not violated by the college's decision.

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This says that there is no doubt if homosexual "marriage" makes it to the Supreme Court, it will be forced on the entire nation in a 5-4 decision.

[Pepper]

Sabre86

 

This is a bad decision.

 

SCOTUS blog

 

Issue: Whether a public university law school may deny school funding and other benefits to a religious student organization because the group requires its officers and voting members to agree with its core religious viewpoints.

 

Alito also suggested that the school policy were applied as Garre had described it, a group of ten Muslim students would have to allow 50 students who had strongly anti-Muslim views to come in, take it over, and run it as they pleased. “You would say the First Amendment would allow that,” the Justice commented. “That has never happened in 20 years,” Garre responded, but both Alito and then the Chief Justice dismissed that comment as unresponsive.

 

 

 

Here's a good wrapup by Nancy French

 

David's Analysis of the Supreme Court's Decision Today

 

 

Some of you may not have understood the ramifications of the Supreme Court's CLS v. Martinez case, as I noted below. Here's what David wrote on NRO. (Full disclosure: Most of you know David worked hard on this case, because he's a senior counsel at the Alliance Defense Fund and the director of its Center for Academic Freedom. ADF was co-counsel for the Christian Legal Society).

 

The good: The Court’s ruling is remarkably narrow. One of the strange quirks of this case is that there were actually two university policies at issue at different times in the case. Initially, the Christian Legal Society was de-recognized because it allegedly violated the school’s nondiscrimination policy, which prohibited — among other things — discrimination on the basis of “religion” and “sexual orientation” (CLS required leaders and voting members to agree with the group’s statement of faith and refrain from extramarital sexual activity). During the course of the litigation, the university stated that its policy actually required student groups to accept “all comers.” In other words, student groups could not exclude students from membership or leadership for any reason. This kind of policy is exceedingly rare: At the time of the oral argument, we were aware of no other university with an “all comers” policy.

Despite what you might read in the mainstream media, the court did not rule that the “classic” nondiscrimination policy (which is in force in hundreds of universities) trumped the student group’s right to freedom of association. That issue was left unresolved. Instead, the Court ruled that the all-comers policy (which is in force virtually nowhere) was constitutional — but only if it had been applied equally to all groups on campus.

 

So CLS has not yet lost its case. Despite an unfavorable ruling on the all-comers policy, it can still prevail on remand if it proves that the university did not apply the policy to all student groups but instead specifically targeted CLS. We have powerful evidence that the university has, in fact, targeted CLS.

 

The bad: Despite the narrowness of the ruling, it’s still a bad opinion. By emphasizing the value of dissent within groups, the Court ignores the fundamental reality of an all-comers policy: Distinct student organizations exist at the whim of the majority. If “all comers” can join, then the majority can override the speech of any student group. Thus the true marketplace of ideas exists by the permission (or, more likely, apathy) of the majority. The potential for minority or disfavored groups at schools with an all-comers policy to self-censor to avoid controversy — and potential hostile takeovers — is high. As those who follow the twists and turns of free speech on campus know, attempted takeovers are hardly unheard of; just ask the Young Americans for Freedom at Central Michigan University.

 

The ugly: In many ways, this case is the bad fruit of a much earlier bad decision, Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin v. Southworth. In Southworth, the Court ruled that it was constitutionally acceptable for a university to force students to pay a student-activity fee to fund student expression (even if they were forced to fund speech they disagreed with) so long as the fees were dispensed in a “viewpoint neutral” manner. Justice Ginsburg explicitly noted that under the all-comers policy, “No Hastings student is forced to fund a group that would reject her as a member.”

 

There’s no doubt that the decision is disappointing to those who cherish free speech and free association, but it is far more limited than it could have been. The conflict between free association and nondiscrimination endures, and it wouldn’t surprise me if we’ll eventually be back before the Supreme Court on that core issue.