Court Upholds Forced Association on Campus
The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled that a California law school is not required to recognize religious groups that have closed or discriminatory membership requirements. In essence, this mean that the college can defund any campus religious group that requires its members to follow a particular faith.
David French over at Phi Beta Cons sums up why this a horrible precedent:
From a common-sense standpoint, this is absurd. Imagine telling a Baptist church that its search for a new pastor had to include equal consideration of Buddhist or Hindu candidates. Imagine telling a synagogue that they were engaged in unlawful “discrimination” if they categorically refused to permit imams from functioning as rabbis. How can student guarantee that they can maintain their distinctive voice if each group essentially has to be open to all students, regardless of those students’ beliefs or intentions?
Of course, the ruling extends beyond religious groups to any campus club or organization. Maybe it’s a reductio ad absurdum, but I wonder what this kind of “non-discriminatory environment” would look like at large. For example, the Oregon Commentator has pretty loose membership requirements, aside from my explicit “no hippie nonsense or ASUO fan-fiction” rule. Could the magazine be defunded for not printing or associating with hippie nonsense?
Likewise, could I go to the Student Insurgent and demand to have my articles on laissez-faire capitalism printed? Like French notes, what happens to distinctive voice when you have no control over membership? Or, as the late great Groucho Marx once said, “I don’t care to belong to any club that would have me as a member.”
Cross-posted at Campus Magazine Online.
The question is whether or not the courts would’ve ruled the same if it had been a neo-Nazi trying to join a Jewish students union or a white separatist (or any white person) joining a Black students union.
Mr. French’s analogy is way off the mark, unless his hypothetical Baptist church or synagogue was being publicly funded. The law school isn’t telling the group who it can or can’t elect as its leader or who can or can’t qualify for membership; the law school is defending its right to set rules that apply to every student group it funds across the board. I fail to grasp why any student group that wants money from its school thinks it should have the right to exclude whatever students it feels like excluding, while taking their money.
If you want to have a private, restrictive group, then keep it private. Pay for it yourself. Stop expecting the rest of us who don’t believe in your particular mythology to pay for your folly.
I guess this means if I go back to grad school, Hillel will have to take me in.
It’s SEDER TIME!
If you want to have a private, restrictive group, then keep it private. Pay for it yourself. Stop expecting the rest of us who don’t believe in your particular mythology to pay for your folly.
Would you apply this same standard to the examples I gave above?
What a horrible ruling from the 9th circuit court.
It’ll be interesting to see how this plays out given Southworth and Rosenberger. Silly kangaroo 9th circuit.
That’s an insult to kangaroos.
Well, the Ninth Circuit has always been a bastion of originalist thought, so I’ll let this one slide…
Would you apply this same standard to the examples I gave above?
You didn’t give any examples, except to say that Oregon Commentator has loose membership rules, which presumably would pass muster. The ruling says nothing about forcing any campus journal to print anything. “Reductio ad absurdum,” indeed.
It’s funny, isn’t it, that none of your disparaging commenters can come up with one cogent opinion about why a publicly funded organization should be able to take public money, then categorically deny certain members of the public the option to participate in the organization they are paying for. I think that is a pretty good indication that the 9th Circuit got it right, especially when all you can come up with are unrelated questions that don’t apply to the ruling.
It is far more of an encroachment on freedom of association that the state forces many private entities not to discriminate on the basis of sex, race, religion, and sexual orientation than that the state forces an entity accepting public money to do the same.
Let me help you out here, Mike. I said, in the very first comment under this post, directly above your post:
The question is whether or not the courts would’ve ruled the same if it had been a neo-Nazi trying to join a Jewish students union or a white separatist (or any white person) joining a Black students union.
So let me lay this out for you, nice and easy like.
You think it’s fair for the court to prohibit public entities (in this case, campus religious groups) from banning certain members of the public. Would you also agree that black student unions should be forced to let white people join? Should Jewish student groups be forced to admit neo-Nazis or anti-Semitic Muslims?
If your answer is “yes,” then there’s really no reason to have a Jewish Students’ Union or a Black Students’ Union, is there?
Vincent articulated perfectly every point I could have made on this subject. With this ruling, all Multicultural center-surrounding unions will have to cease or will have to allow other folk in.
Right on. I can understand Micheal’s point, but as the last two posters alluded to, the correct follow-up question should be “Why do we have public organizations that, by their very name and nature, encourage private or exclusive membership?”
Riddle me that, batman…
BTW Mike, why does your link go to the Debian page?
Maybe he likes Debian, as all right-thinking people should.
If your answer is “yes,” then there’s really no reason to have a Jewish Students’ Union or a Black Students’ Union, is there?
Hastings does have both Jewish and Black law student associations and I would presume that these groups are subject to the same rules any other group funded by the school is. There’s no reason for an anti-Semite to join the HJLSA except to disrupt the proceedings of that group. Any group could easily have rules that prohibit behavior or actions that might be disruptive or be contrary to the group’s purpose. There’s also no reason for any group that takes public funding to exclude members of the public from joining based upon identity. The stated purpose of the HJLSA, for instance, is:
To promote activities related to Judaism on campus; to provide a forum for Jewish students to meet and network; and to represent the interests of Jewish students to Hastings’ administration.
What there implies that, in order to accomplish these goals, the HJLSA must restrict membership to people who identify themselves as Jewish? Would you have to be Orthodox? Reformed? What about secular Jews? Gay or lesbian Jews? Jews for Jesus? Partners (whether married or not) of Jewish students who haven’t converted to Judaism? Once you start allowing publicly funded groups to restrict membership based solely upon someone’s arbitrary definitions of identity, you open up the possibility of ever more restrictive criteria for all kinds of groups wanting to promote narrowly construed interests for narrow segments of the student population, some of which will be in direct opposition the interests of other segments of the student population. You also put people in the awkward and Constitutionally suspect position of having somehow to prove that they qualify for membership in a group based upon, among other criteria, their genetic background. What about an apparently white Hastings student with one Black parent, or two Black grandparents? Should that student have to prove that he or she is at least some percentage black to join the BLSA, if in fact he or she is genuinely interested in that groups goals (“To articulate and promote the professional needs and goals of Black law students; to foster and encourage professional competence; and bring about change within the legal system in order to make it responsive to the needs of the Black community”)? Should the BLSA take public money and then have the right to say you can’t join this group unless you can prove you are at least 75% Black, or any particular percentage?
The U.S. has always been a melting pot, one of the consequences of which is that the pot gets stirred. There are gay Christians and Black Jews and Chinese-Cherokees running around who should have the freedom to participate in publicly funded student organizations who’s interests mesh with their own, whatever they look like or whatever their ethnic heritage. If the Orthodox Jews want to associate only with other Orthodox Jews, that’s fine, but don’t expect atheists and evangelical Christians and Muslims to pay for it. In the case at hand, the organization wanted expressly to deny membership to anyone who is gay or lesbian, anyone who does not adhere to its “Statement of Faith” (which is more involved than saying “I’m a Christian,” if you read what it entails), yet it wants everyone, including gays and lesbians and people who profess no faith or other faiths, including other interpretations of Christianity, to fund its activities. That’s ludicrous, though all too typical these days of numerous strains of Christian activists who seek to shove their ugly deity down everybody else’s throats.
And yes, I like and use Debian, which is why I link to it. Free-as-in-speech, free-as-in-beer … what could be better?
While I have to give you points for being consistent (and for using Debian), I don’t really think your argument holds up. It’s rather easy to find programs that are funded, wholly or in part, by public money and who deny benefits to members of the public based on a whole host of traits, ranging from physical to economic to racial. Affirmative action comes to mind.
You say “There’s no reason for an anti-Semite to join the HJLSA except to disrupt the proceedings of that group”, but in this case at least, it seems that doesn’t matter, since, as it mentions in the original link:
“The 9th Circuit panel found that Hastings’ rule requiring open voting membership in all student groups, even if members disagree with the mission of the group, is permitted under the 9th Circuit’s decision in Truth v. Kent School Dist.”
I might be mistaken, but I take that to mean that an anti-Semite who joined a Jewish student union for the express purpose of disrupting proceedings is, in the 9th Circuit’s view, legally allowed to do so and the hypothetical JSU would be prevented from enacting rules that made such an individual powerless.
If that’s correct and, as David French notes, groups are disallowed from reserving voting and leadership positions to people who agree with the group’s “mission”, what’s to stop anti-Semites from taking over Jewish groups, white separatists from demanding their say in Black Student Unions, homophobes exerting influence in gay clubs, and Insurgent kids forcing the Commentator to run stories glorifying eco-terrorists?
It’s not that I don’t appreciate the larger point you’re making, but in this case, I just don’t see how it works, especially in the world of campus politics, where everyone demands (and usually gets) their piece (and their “safe space”), especially if they can claim some kind of minority status.
Consistency is fine: ban all of them or allow all of them to be little identity ghettos. But denying Christian groups the ability to choose who gets to have a say in their student group while turning a blind eye to how other racially/religiously/sexually defined groups run their shops is pretty shoddy.
I mostly agree with the previous poster. I really think groups on campus should focus on getting their own damned monies. I enjoy using the plural of money even when I’m using it the wrong way. I also think that it would lead to better guidelines about what the club is really about, which would bring more transparency and lower the I-fee(unless they didn’t want any money, at which point their group isn’t recognized).
So I’m not sure why the commentator would be against these ideas.
I also use Ubuntu a lot which was developed off of debian. I also think that the open source ideas and groups are probably the best living example of my political views.
I don’t however, like it when my network card causes a fucking freeze up when it connects to my router.
What kind of shitty, North Korean manufactured network card do you have?
I’m a little perplexed about one thing about the circuit court ruling … if the law dictates, as Vincent claims, that “groups are disallowed from reserving voting and leadership positions to people who agree with the group’s “mission”” (and on an even smaller scale, just basic membership to these groups), then how do people accept membership or get leadership roles to these organizations? Certainly, there are going to be some qualifying measures for these leadership positions, and there is no legal way to enforce equality on filling these type of positions.
Let me clarify my point with an example: I work at a company. The boss retires/gets fired/dies/etc. A leadership position is open, and more often than not, the position is going to go to an employee (or possibly an outside applicant) that is the most qualified. To be ‘qualified’, this person is someone with strong leadership skills, is loyal to the company, and ultimately would do a good job to the mission of the company. This decision is almost always made by a group of the employees peers (in this example, a board of directors or managers). Now, an outside applicant is known to be a very strong critic of the company, and they want to dismantle the company. According to the “equal opportunity” act for businesses, this person is allowed to apply, and should not be disqualified for their personal beliefs (including their beliefs that our company is “evil”). They can apply, but honestly, the board is probably not going to choose this person, and instead hire Jim, a loyal employee who has worked for fifteen years for the company. I hope that this example gets the point across – there are going to be some measures for qualification that are impossible to enforce in the legal setting.
Applicants for leadership positions of a group almost always go to “qualified” candidates, made by a vote of their peers. There is no way to remove, in these people’s perception, who is the most qualified. But this ruling, as it sounds like, is trying to do exactly that. For example, if a leadership position needed to be filled in the Black student Union, this ruling states that I can apply for it (I’ll say for the record that I am not black, nor any percentage (AFAIK!)). But would I get a fair shake at the position? Ultimately, somebody decides whether or not I will get that position, and I am guessing that it is the other leadership members of the BSU. What’s preventing them from saying no to me and choosing someone else? Subjectively, it might be because I am not a part of the group’s mission-defined minority – but who can say? If the position goes to someone else, can I, or should I, be able to complain to the government and file a grievance or lawsuit against the BSU?
It seems as if there is a very slippery slope here. It reminds me of those “equal opportunity” statements on job applications. Sure, anybody can apply … but we all know that management has the final say on who gets hired, and is going to hire somebody that is most aligned with their mission statement.
And BTW, I also use Ubuntu, which is built off of Debian … Very good stuff!
But I will just say that using the “free-as-in-beer” phrase is getting nearly beaten to death. We need a new phrase to describe open-source…
But I will just say that using the “free-as-in-beer” phrase is getting nearly beaten to death.
Dare you question the holy words of RMS?