In the 5-to-4 ruling it handed down on Monday, the Supreme Court rejected arguments by the Christian Legal Society that the University of California’s Hastings College of Law had violated the First Amendment rights of students wishing to establish a campus chapter by requiring their proposed group to admit homosexual students as a condition for receiving the school’s official recognition and financial support. Hastings argued that state universities have an obligation to adhere to strict anti-bias rules. The Christian Legal Society (“CLS”) – with backing from numerous religious groups – argued that forcing it to comply with anti-bias rules amounts to infringing on its First Amendment right to freedom of religion. Ruling against the CLS, the Court found that the law school’s policy was “a reasonable, viewpoint-neutral condition on access” that did not raise First Amendment issues in the way the Christian Legal Society argued. The ruling, however, focused only on an “accept-all-comers” policy requiring any student group seeking official recognition to be open to anyone who wishes to join. Many universities have a different type of anti-bias policy, allowing student groups to have requirements for membership and leadership as long as those requirements are not discriminatory. CLS had argued that such nondiscrimination policies preclude students from organizing groups based on religious beliefs, infringing on their First Amendment rights of free expression and association. Hastings asserted that the CLS was denied recognition based on its “accept-all-comers” policy, and not on any nondiscrimination policy. The “viewpoint-neutrality” of the “accept-all-comers” policy swayed the Court’s opinion, with only Justice Stevens arguing in a concurring opinion (not joined by anyone else) that even the broader non-discrimination policy was constitutional.
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