Taking Sides
WASHINGTON – The U.S. Supreme Court is about to consider a higher education case that has largely been seen as pitting the rights of gay students against the rights of religious students. But on Monday, the deadline for various groups to file briefs in the case, major higher education associations entered the dispute, arguing that the case should really be seen as about academic freedom.
Led by the American Council on Education, 14 higher education organizations backed the right of the Hastings College of Law (part of the University of California) to deny formal recognition or funds to student organizations that violate the law school’s anti-bias policy. Among the forms of discrimination that policy bars is bias based on sexual orientation, and the Christian Legal Society, which is challenging the policy in court, bars gay members from joining.
The dispute between Hastings and the society is similar to ones between the religious organization and a number of other public law schools, and to disputes at other public colleges over Christian fraternities. Some federal courts have ruled in favor of the Christian organizations, which have argued that their First Amendment rights are violated when public colleges refuse to recognize them. They maintain that such policies infringe on the rights of religious students to form groups consistent with their faith.
Other courts, including those that reviewed the Hastings case, have found that public colleges are within their rights to enforce anti-bias policies. These courts have generally noted that the colleges apply their policies in ways that are consistent and that are not designed to limit particular beliefs.
While the American Council on Education and other higher education groups are backing Hastings, several Christian colleges and an association that represents them are backing the Christian student organizations. While the legal dispute in question concerns the conduct of public colleges, the Christian colleges argue that a win for Hastings before the Supreme Court could endanger their right to hire only faculty members who share their religious beliefs.
The Academic Freedom Argument
The American Council on Education’s brief goes out of its way not to