eNews for FBOs--July 12, 2010

In a June 28th 5-4 ruling, the US Supreme Court upheld the decision of the Hastings College of the Law (University of California system) not to recognize a student chapter of the Christian Legal Society as an official student group. The CLS group requires voting members and leaders to be faithful to a Christian statement of faith and conduct. The Court said that the law school was within its rights to apply to the CLS club the requirement that all student groups be open to "all comers"--not only with regard to attendance at events but even for leadership posts.

The CLS student group may yet be vindicated because there is evidence that the law school applied its supposed policy arbitrarily. Moreover, it seems that few other educational institutions have the same "all comers" policy, which would allow Marxist students to take over the Ayn Rand club or pro-lifers to change a pro-choice student group into an anti-abortion advocacy operation.

Yet, as many commentators have noted, whatever the limited applicability of the actual ruling, the Court's dismissive language about associational rights and about Christian standards of belief and conduct is very troubling. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who wrote the majority opinion, spoke of the CLS group's "desire to exclude" and construed its standards for leadership to be mere discrimination. Justice Kennedy, the decisive vote, went so far as to compare the group's faith standard to the discredited "loyalty oaths" of the 50s.

Such Supreme Court views and language only further our culture's mounting tide of "anti-discrimination" sentiment, which pits individual freedom and non-traditional conduct against organizational boundaries and against religiously based behavior standards. There is every reason to expect activist lawyers, courts, and organizations to use the CLS decision to try to undermine religious clubs and other organizations.

Indeed, the Supreme Court had hardly delivered its ruling when lawyers for the City of Philadelphia seized on the statements to further their effort to drive the local Boy Scouts out of the city-owned space the group has used without charge for more than 80 years. The Scouts became a target of activist officials across the nation as soon as the Supreme Court, in a very different ruling in 2000, said that the organization could not be forced to accept openly gay Scoutmasters.

The Philadelphia court likely will consider the City lawyers' arguments too much of a stretch. But the episode should serve as a warning. Faith-based clubs and service organizations shouldn't be surprised if other activist lawyers and officials try the same stunt. Don't roll over! Challenge them! And work on how to make a persuasive case to them and to the public about the how the good works you do are deeply rooted in your "peculiar" beliefs and standards.