U.S. Supreme Court Upholds School’s Non-Discrimination Policy
The U.S. Supreme Court Monday issued an historic and potentially far-reaching ruling that public schools can require official student groups - religious or otherwise – to abide by school-wide non-discrimination policies and open their membership to everyone, including LGBT people.
The decision in Christian Legal Society v. Martinez upholds U.C. California Hastings School of Law’s non-discrimination policy which includes a prohibition of discrimination based on sexual orientation.
The National Center for Lesbian Rights (NCLR) and Paul Smith of Jenner & Block LLP represented Outlaw, an LGBT student group which intervened to defend the school’s non-discrimination policy. GLAD together with Lambda Legal submitted a friend of the court brief, as did the ACLU.
The Christian Legal Society (CLS) brought suit when Hastings denied CLS registration as an official campus organization due to the group’s refusal to comply with the school’s non-discrimination policy. CLS said it could not comply because it requires those who join its group to agree not to engage in “unrepentant participation in or advocacy of a sexually immoral lifestyle” including “homosexual conduct.”
Registration as a student organization at Hastings gives groups the right to use Hastings’ name and logo, access to a university email address, limited use of facilities, and modest university funds for travel and other expenses. CLS argued that the school’s written policy only limits school support to organizations that agree not to discriminate based on certain enumerated categories, including religion and sexual orientation, but that CLS excludes members on the basis of conduct, not orientation.
The Court rejected that argument, as had the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals and the U.S. District Court before. Writing the 5-4 majority opinion, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said, “CLS proposes that Hastings permit exclusion because of belief but forbid discrimination due to status. But that proposal would impose on Hastings a daunting labor. How should the Law School go about determining whether a student organization cloaked prohibited status exclusion in belief-based garb?”
Addressing the fact that Hastings did not prohibit CLS from meeting or communicating with students on campus, but only declined to provide the group with the resources afforded officially recognized student organizations, Justice Stevens wrote in his concurrence, “Other groups may exclude or mistreat Jews, blacks, and women—or those who do not share their contempt for Jews, blacks, and women. A free society must tolerate such groups. It need not subsidize them.”
“We’re gratified by the Court’s ruling,” says GLAD Legal Director Gary Buseck. “CLS is entitled to believe what it wants about sexual orientation and same-sex sexual conduct and to express its views to others. But as the Court clearly stated, the group has no right to government funding for its discrimination against any student, including against lesbian and gay students.”