Hansen case or, Clueless in Ann Arbor

[Rick Duncan]

Doug is right on here. Suppose a school delegated
control over its panel on religion and sexual
orientation to the "Straight Students Club" and
suppose further that the Club then invited 6
conservative pastors and rabbis to expalin that
homosexual conduct is sinful and an abomination in the
eyes of God.

Would this panel violate the EC? It would if it is
school sponsored speech. No? But now assume that the
school claims that it has not sponsored the speech,
but rather created a forum for students to present
speakers on the topic. OK. But now the school must
allow speakers from other viewpoints to have access to
the forum. No?

Either way, a one-sided panel is unconstitutional. No?

I have only skimmed the opinion, but the result seems
sound and what I have read is very well written
(including a wonderful description of "one-way
diversity" as "a paradox of a public high school
celebrating 'diversity' by refusing to permit the
presentation to students of an 'unwelcomed' viewpoint
on the topic of homosexuality and religion, while
actively promoting the competing view." Well said.

It reminds me of Mike McConnell's wonderful statement
it his brief in Dale: "A society in which each and
every organization must be equally diverse is a
society which has destroyed diversity."


Rick Duncan
  
--- Douglas Laycock <DLaycock at mail.law.utexas.edu>
wrote:
>          I have not had time to read the opinion,
> and I barely skimmed the 
> facts.  But that skim suggests two pretty clear
> reasons why the school 
> district did not claim that this was government
> sponsored speech.  The 
> school district couldn't claim to be sponsoring all
> that was said, because 
> it was not willing to be responsible for everything
> that might be said on 
> multiple student-organized panels.
> 
>          Basically the government has a choice:  it
> can claim speech as its 
> own and take political responsibility for it, and
> then it need not be 
> viewpoint neutral.  Or it say it is just creating a
> forum, preserving its 
> ability to deny responsibility if anything
> controversial is said, but then 
> it has to be viewpoint neutral in granting access or
> composing panels.  The 
> line between the two choices is not bright in the
> real world, but the 
> difference between the two ends of the continuum is
> quite clear.
> 
>          The second and perhaps more obvious reason
> is that the school 
> could not claim to sponsor this particular panel,
> because it could not 
> sponsor religious speech.  At least for this panel,
> it had to be creating a 
> forum, and its administration of that forum (whether
> directly or through 
> student delegatees, see Santa Fe ISD v. Doe) had to
> be viewpoint neutral.
> 
> 
> At 03:50 PM 4/19/2004 -0400, Vance R. Koven wrote:
> >While this case is easily accessed on Westlaw or
> Lexis, a free copy is 
> >available at:
>
>http://www.michbar.org/opinions/district/2003/120503/21290.pdf
> >
> >And if the distinction hinges on "issue
> partisanship" vs. party 
> >partisanship, is there any real distinction between
> government speech and 
> >government-sponsored speech? If the government
> itself could issue 
> >statements exhorting the public to accept
> propositions that many of them 
> >morally, religiously, or just plain pragmatically
> abhor, then why can't it 
> >recruit subalterns to do the same thing?
> >
> >
> >Vance R. Koven
> >Boston, Massachusetts USA
> >vrkoven at world.std.com
> >
> >_______________________________________________
> >To post, send message to Religionlaw at lists.ucla.edu
> >To subscribe, unsubscribe, change options, or get
> password, see 
>
>http://lists.ucla.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/religionlaw
> 
> 
> 
> 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>
_______________________________________________
> To post, send message to Religionlaw at lists.ucla.edu
> To subscribe, unsubscribe, change options, or get
> password, see
>
http://lists.ucla.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/religionlaw
> 


=====
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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