|
 |
|
|
7/8/2010
Jenner & Block recently secured a victory for the Firm’s client, Hastings Outlaw, in the closely watched case Christian Legal Society v. Martinez before the Supreme Court. The Court ruled by a 5-4 margin that a public university law school can require student groups it recognizes to open their membership to all students, and decline to fund a religious student group that requires its officers and voting members to agree with its core religious beliefs, effectively excluding gay and lesbian students and students with other religious beliefs. In a victory for the public university and the LGBT students at the school who wished to take advantage of the open membership policy, the Court ruled that the university did not violate First Amendment rights when denying recognition to a group with an exclusionary membership policy.
The petitioner in the case, Christian Legal Society (CLS), claimed a First Amendment right to receive official recognition from Hastings Law School in San Francisco, while maintaining a policy that excluded members on “unrepentant homosexual conduct,” among other things. CLS claimed that the denial of official recognition violated its free speech, expressive association, and religious freedom rights under the First Amendment. Jenner & Block client, Hastings Outlaw, had intervened in the district court on the side of Hastings in order to defend the open membership policy and the rights of its LGBT members and all students to freely participate in all student groups on campus. The law school and Hastings Outlaw prevailed in the district court and the Ninth Circuit, and the Supreme Court granted review last fall.
In a ruling authored by Justice Ginsburg, the Court affirmed the Ninth Circuit, ruling in favor of Hastings and Hasting Outlaw and remanding on only a narrow previously unaddressed issue. The Court held that CLS’s First Amendment rights were not violated, because CLS was not forced to admit members with which it disagreed. Rather, CLS had a choice: it could elect the benefits of official recognition as part of the “limited public forum” for open-membership student groups that Hastings established, or it could forego the benefits and maintain a closed membership policy. Because Hastings had established a limited public forum for only certain purposes – including facilitation of leadership, educational, and social opportunities for all students and encouragement of dialogue between students – it was entitled to withhold benefits from certain groups based on reasonable and viewpoint-neutral rules. The open membership requirement for all groups, the Court held, was both reasonable and “textbook viewpoint neutral.”
In a separate concurrence, Justice Kennedy emphasized Hastings’ interest in encouraging students to interact with a wide range of opinions in the student activities that it funded and supported. Justice Kennedy noted that Hastings’ “objectives may be better achieved if students can act cooperatively to learn from and teach each other through interactions in social and intellectual contexts. A vibrant dialogue is not possible if students wall themselves off from opposing points of view.”
Hastings Outlaw was represented in the Supreme Court by a Jenner & Block team that included partners Paul M. Smith and Duane C. Pozza, and associates Daniel I. Weiner, Anna M. Baldwin, and Jennifer V. Yeh.
Practice Groups:
Appellate and Supreme Court Practice
Litigation Department
|
|
Print This Page
