SCOTUS: Freedom of Association? Not So Much

June 28, 2010

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Here’s the upshot from attorneys for the Alliance Defense Fund which helped  in the case of the Christian Legal Society.

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled 5–4 Monday to uphold an unusual university policy that forces student groups to allow outsiders who disagree with their beliefs to become leaders and voting members.  The court confined its opinion to the unique policy and did not address whether nondiscrimination policies in general, which are typical on public university campuses, may require this.   The court concluded that public universities may override a religious student group’s right to determine its leadership only if it denies that right to all student groups.

Attorneys with the Christian Legal Society and Alliance Defense Fund represented a student chapter of CLS at California’s Hastings College of the Law in the lawsuit, Christian Legal Society v. Martinez.  The suit was filed in 2004 after the law school refused to recognize the chapter because the group requires all of its officers and voting members to agree with its basic Christian beliefs.

So while the Christian group at Hastings School of Law was required to take all comers it now must also allow non believers a voting voice on its board. Oh, and the animal rights crackpots? They must allow their board to be populated by meat eaters. Jewish groups? Muslim holocaust promulgators. 
In his dissent, Justice Alito made this dire warning:

I do not think it is an exaggeration to say that today’sdecision is a serious setback for freedom of expression in this country. Our First Amendment reflects a “profound national commitment to the principle that debate onpublic issues should be uninhibited, robust, and wide-open.” New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, 376 U. S. 254, 270 (1964). Even if the United States is the only Nation that shares this commitment to the same extent, I would not change our law to conform to the international norm. I fear that the Court’s decision marks a turn in that direc-tion. Even those who find CLS’s views objectionableshould be concerned about the way the group has beentreated—by Hastings, the Court of Appeals, and now this Court. I can only hope that this decision will turn out tobe an aberration. 

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