U.S. Supreme Court Diminishes Religious Freedom

On Monday, June 28th, in a 5-4 decision, the United States Supreme Court ruled that in certain circumstances public universities can override a Christian student group’s right to choose its own leadership. 

The case arose out of a situation involving the Christian Legal Society (CLS) at the Hastings College of Law in San Francisco. The school had created a very unique policy that required that “all-comers” be welcome for its Registered Student Organizations — saying that student organizations may not deny membership or the opportunity to seek leadership to any student regardless of their status or beliefs.

While the local CLS chapter welcomes anyone to attend the meetings and events, it requires its leadership and voting members to agree with its basic Christian beliefs and traditional biblical standards. The most controversial portion of their by-laws was the requirement that leaders not engage in sexual behavior outside of one man, one woman marriage.

Because of this position, Hastings refused to recognize CLS as an official student organization and thereby denied them access to funds, facilities, and channels of communication that are available to student groups. 

CLS sued, claiming the policy violated their right of free speech, expressive association, and free exercise of religion. Yesterday’s decision upheld the school’s policy as being constitutional. 

Justice Samuel Alito dissented from the majority, saying, in part, that “the Court should have rejected this as absurd.” Unfortunately, common sense evades those who proclaim liberal “justice.”

Fortunately, this decision is not the final word in the case. It has been sent back to the Ninth Circuit District Court to determine whether or not the policy is being applied in a discriminatory way. 

The lower court will determine whether every student group at Hastings is being forced to live by the same rules, which is unlikely. If it were, the College Democrats would be required to allow Republicans to be members and the Friends of Israel club would have to allow members of the Aryan Nation to be members. Such efforts, of course, are absurd.

Since the college is probably not doing everything they can to make sure that Atheist Student Group admit the officers of the local Intelligent Design Club, this policy is almost certainly not being applied in a non-discriminatory way and it will ultimately be thrown out. 

But that does not mean there isn’t anything to be concerned about. 

In a culture growing more and more hostile to traditional religion, specifically bible-believing Christianity, we should be concerned that our institutions of “higher learning” would go to all this trouble to ostracize students who believe sexuality outside of marriage is immoral. And we should be even more concerned that our highest Court has refused to acknowledge the First Amendment’s preeminence here, which guarantees the freedom of association and religious practice.

Read The Supreme Court’s full opinion HERE