Justices weigh case of clash of beliefs

The clash of religious freedom versus gay rights on college campuses came before the Supreme Court on Monday as lawyers for a Christian student group argued the group should not be forced to accept atheists or homosexuals into its leadership ranks.

No matter how justices rule in Christian Legal Society vs. Martinez, the case will affect religious groups across the country that have set up shop on secular college campuses.

Monday’s debate concentrated on whether the University of California Hastings College of the Law in San Francisco could refuse to recognize a campus chapter of the Christian Legal Society (CLS) because the latter bars non-Christians and sexually active homosexuals from becoming voting members or leaders.

“The [school’s anti-discrimination] policy is blatantly unconstitutional and manifestly overbroad,” said Michael McConnell, the California lawyer arguing on behalf of the CLS. “It’s a frontal assault on freedom of association … to form around cherished beliefs.”

Once the campus chapter formally affiliated with the CLS in 2004, it was told that its bylaws — which stipulated belief in a Christian God and forbade membership to students who commit fornication, adultery or homosexual acts — collided with the school’s non-discrimination policy. The school then forbade recognition, which allows an organization to use school classroom space, e-mail communications and other facilities, and to receive student government funding.

The chapter sued, saying the school had violated its First Amendment rights to speech, assembly and the free exercise of religion. It lost in both U.S. District Court and the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals levels before the Supreme Court announced it would review the case.

The high court is expected to rule this summer.

If allowed to stand, Mr. McConnell argued, the school’s policy would compel similar organizations nationwide to accept within their ranks people who could undermine the entire group. For example, he added, “What if an NAACP chapter would have to let a racist skinhead sit in on its meetings?”

“It may be an ill-advised policy,” Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said, “but the school says ‘It’s our policy, and it’s worked fine.’ All the hypotheticals about sabotage have not happened yet.”

That’s only because, Mr. McConnell responded, the law school only has been enforcing what it calls an “all-comers policy” — that campus groups must accept anyone who wants to join — since 2005.

An all-comers policy, according to CLS, is not a rational way to promote freedom of speech and association because any small group could be hijacked or sabotaged by a group of unsympathetic students who could attend the meetings and vote themselves into office.

“Suppose at a particular campus, there is a great deal of anti-Muslim animus,” Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. said to Gregory Garre, the attorney representing Hastings School of Law and its chancellor, Leo P. Martinez. “And there is a small Muslim group; it has 10 students.

“If the group is required to accept anybody who applies for membership, and 50 students who hate Muslims show up and they want to take over that group, you say the First Amendment allows that?”

“This example has never happened at Hastings in 20 years,” Mr. Garre said. “It has never really happened in the history of American education.”

“Well,” Justice Alito said, “CLS obviously thinks this is a real threat.”

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