WASHINGTON- U.S. Supreme Court justices Monday seemed to split down ideological lines in a case that pits anti-discrimination policies in public universities against the First Amendment rights of students.
Christian Legal Society sued the University of California Hastings School of Law in 2004 when the school denied the group’s application to become an officially recognized student organization, which would give it access to funding, priority access to space and official listings. The group requires members to sign a statement of faith, which includes language barring homosexuals and nonChristians from joining.
Much of Monday’s debate came down to the school’s “all comers” policy that requires student organizations to include any student who wishes to join. The questions from Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonya Sotomayor were at odds with those from Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Antonin Scalia.
Ginsburg and Sotomayor peppered CLS attorney Michael McConnell with questions about the discriminatory nature of the group’s policies.
“Are you suggesting that if a group wanted to exclude all black people, all women, all handicapped persons,” Sotomayor asked, “that a school has to accept that group and recognize it, give it funds and otherwise lend it space?”
Scalia and Roberts were quick to question the value of the rule at all. The two frequently interrupted Hastings attorney Gregory Garre to pose hypothetical situations and ask him how the policy would be applied.
“It would require the campus Republican Club to admit Democrats,” Justice Scalia said. “Not just to membership but to officership.”
“It seems your policy is evolving to meet whatever First Amendment pressure comes,” Roberts said of the Hastings defense.
The justices spent considerable time trying to determine what issues were even before the court. Both Justice Anthony Kennedy and Justice Steven Breyer questioned whether the facts of the case had been fully argued before coming to the Supreme Court. Scalia and Breyer characterized the rule as “silly” and “crazy” at separate points.
Alliance Defense Fund attorney Casey Mattox, an organization supporting CLS, said the questioning led him to believe the justices’ ruling may favor the Christian group.
“I am hoping they see Hastings’ policy isn’t just unreasonably, its silly,” he said.
But Hastings supporters said the issue is constitutionality.
“Even if the policy may be silly if applied in the extreme,” said the Rev. Barry Lynn of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, “the issue is if it is constitutional.”