Supreme Court to consider case against California law school

[Julie Marie]

SAN FRANCISCO -- At the oldest law school in the West, law is being made this semester, not just taught. In a case that carries great implications for how public universities and schools must accommodate religious groups, the University of California's Hastings College of the Law is defending its anti-discrimination policy against charges that it denies religious freedom.

The college, which requires officially recognized student groups to admit any Hastings student who wants to join, may be well-meaning, says the student outpost of the Christian Legal Society. But the group contends that requiring it to allow gay students and nonbelievers into its leadership would be a renunciation of its core beliefs, and that the policy violates the Constitution's guarantee of free speech, association with like-minded individuals and exercise of religion.

"Hastings' policy is a threat to every group that seeks to form and define its own voice," the group told the court in a brief. The case, Christian Legal Society v. Martinez, will be argued in the Supreme Court Monday morning.

This blows my mind.  The CLS is fighting a non-discriminatory school policy.  It seemed everything was fine until...

A Christian group was part of the landscape for years. But when it decided to affiliate with the national CLS, it was told the group's ban of gays and nonbelievers in leadership positions violated the college's policy and its insistence that all Hastings students be allowed to join any club.

The CLS sued. A federal judge sided with the school, saying its blanket policy did not single out the religious group because of its views. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit affirmed.

Of course, the CLS doesn't see this as an across the board anti-discrimination school policy.  They feel they are being targeted.

The CLS's brief says Hastings' "all-comers" policy is a litigation strategy, at odds with how the college has actually treated other groups. It is not viewpoint-neutral, the brief says, because the policy "targets solely those groups whose beliefs are based on 'religion' or that disapprove of a particular kind of sexual behavior."

Kinda sounds like the pope defending the RCC for not taking action against the pedophile priests.

Hastings counters that the CLS stipulated during the suit that the anti-discrimination policy applied equally to all groups, and said in its brief that the religious organization has created "straw men" to try to convince the court that there are greater constitutional issues to be decided.

Hopefully common sense will prevail and the practice of discrimination won't be supported.

[Vicky]

My nickle is riding on Hastings.  The current make-up of the US Supreme Court was not changed greatly enough by Bush that they will overturn the US 9th Circuit Court Of Appeals on much of anything. 

[Julie Marie]

I hope so.  The spin the CLS is putting on this makes me think of returning to the days when the church was the ruling body.