More on funding religious groups on campus

Fri Sep 24 05:59:36 PDT 2004

Suppose at a state law school, 10 or 15 evangelical
Christians decide to become members of the GLBT group
and proceed to volunteer to lead programs on gay
rights issues. And suppose that in leading these
discussions the Christian students describe
homosexuality as sinful and immoral and unhealthy and
as unworthy of legal recognition and protection.

Suppose further that the officers of the GLBT group
announce that, although the Christian members can
remain members, they may no longer lead discussion
groups unless they sign a statement pledging their
support for gay rights issues.

Should the GLBT group be defunded for this act of
religious "discrimination?" If they are, does it raise
any free speech/expressive association issues?

To return to a suggestion Doug made, if the CLS merely
requires members to subscribe to a statement of
beliefs, is this really religious discrimination? Or
is it merely a reasonable way of insuring that members
of an expressive association are in line with the
purposes of that association?

And if the Law School allows some groups to insist on
ideological purity for members, isn't it viewpoint
discrimination when the Law School penalizes a
religious group for insisting on ideological purity
for its members?

I remember a few years ago that a group of College
Republicans decided it would be fun to show up as a
group at the organizational meeting of the College
Democrats. The CRs paid their dues, and proceeded to
elect themselves as the officers of the CDs. The
campus was outraged that the CRs would seek to destroy
the CDs by taking over the group, and as I recall the
CRs resigned and apologized for their prank.

I think this sense of outrage is healthy. The CRs
should have their group and the CDs should have
theirs. And CLS should be able to have its group, and
to adopt whatever policies are necessary to ensure
that the group is faithful to the beliefs and
principles that it was organized to express and teach.
Any attempt by government to restrict their ability to
express their ideas strikes at the core of the 1A and
the nature of a public forum.

Rick Duncan

--- Douglas Laycock <DLaycock at mail.law.utexas.edu>
wrote:

>          The issue is quite common; it has arisen at
> campuses all around 
> the country.  It is easy to see how the rules got
> drafted to inadvertently 
> cover this; people were copying the main provisions
> of the civil rights 
> laws, not reading the whole statute (where Congress
> carved out the needed 
> exceptions), and not thinking about churches.  It is
> much harder to 
> understand why so many bureaucrats are so mindless,
> or so hostile to 
> religion, as to not be able to understand the
> difference between excluding 
> people of other faiths or of none from the country
> club and excluding them 
> from the church, synagogue, or mosque.
> 
>          When I chaired a committee to redraft free
> speech rules at the 
> University of Texas, we quietly fixed the problem
> here.  The new Texas 
> provision allows religious groups to require a
> statement of faith for 
> officers and voting members.
> 
>          A rule banning discrimination on the basis
> of religion may be 
> generally applicable in the sense of applying to
> everyone, but it is not 
> religiously neutral; religion is an element of the
> rule and an element of 
> the behavior regulated by the rule.  As applied to
> secular organizations, 
> this is not troublesome; although drafted in
> religious terms, it does not 
> burden religious exercise.  As applied to religious
> organizations, it is 
> drafted in religious terms and it does burden
> religion.  It is not saved by 
> the fact that we also ban discrimination on the
> basis of race, sex, and 
> national origin; it is at least as relevant, and
> more analogous, that we do 
> not ban discrimination on the basis of political
> viewpoint.  So all the 
> political organizations on campus, and the much
> smaller number of 
> anti-religious organizations, can enforce
> ideological purity, but the 
> religious organizations on many campuses cannot.
> 
> At 03:50 PM 9/23/2004, Kevin T. McGuire wrote:
> 
> >We face a very similar situation here at the
> University of North 
> >Carolina.  Recently, a Christian fraternity was
> denied recognition as a 
> >campus organization --- and thus denied access to
> campus funds --- because 
> >of its refusal to sign the university s
> non-discrimination policy, which 
> >prohibits  campus groups from excluding potential
> members on several 
> >bases, including religion.
> >
> >The University maintains that it is bound by
> various federal and state 
> >laws not to discriminate, while the group claims
> that, by being forced to 
> >accept those who don't share their faith, its First
> Amendment right of 
> >association is being abridged.
> >
> >In some ways, it is similar to the situation
> presented in the Roberts and 
> >Rotary cases, but those dealt with large, amorphous
> organizations with no 
> >distinct viewpoint.  This is a small (only 3
> members at present) 
> >fundamentalist group, and admitting non-adherents
> would probably undermine 
> >its message.  In light of Boy Scouts v. Dale, which
> I read to suggest that 
> >the state cannot apply anti-discrimination law
> against a group if doing so 
> >would undermine that group s basic message, it
> seems to me that the 
> >fraternity probably has the more solid argument.
> >
> >Does that strike others as sensible, or are there
> other issues that one 
> >ought to consider here?
> >--
> >Kevin T. McGuire
> >Associate Professor
> >Department of Political Science
> >University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
> >Chapel Hill, NC   27599-3265
> >
> >Telephone 919-962-0431      FAX 919-962-0432
> >Email: <mailto:mcguire at unc.edu>mcguire at unc.edu     
> Web: 
>
><http://www.unc.edu/~kmcguire>http://www.unc.edu/~kmcguire
> >_______________________________________________
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> 
> 
> 
> Douglas Laycock
> University of Texas Law School
> 727 E. Dean Keeton St.
> Austin, TX  78705
>          512-232-1341 (voice)
>          512-471-6988 (fax)
>          dlaycock at mail.law.utexas.edu>
_______________________________________________
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others.

=====
Rick Duncan 
Welpton Professor of Law 
University of Nebraska College of Law 
Lincoln, NE 68583-0902

"When the Round Table is broken every man must follow either Galahad or Mordred: middle things are gone." C.S.Lewis, Grand Miracle

"I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed, or numbered."  --The Prisoner

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