Christian Legal Society Chapter of the University of California, Hastings College of the Law v. Martinez (2010)
561 U.S. 661
Case Year: 2010
Case Ruling: 5-4, Affirmed
Opinion Justice: Ginsburg
FACTS
The respondent in this case is Hastings College of the Law (Hastings), a school within the University of California public-school system that gives official recognition to student groups through its "Registered Student Organization" (RSO) program. Several benefits accrue to groups with this status, including the use of school funds, facilities, and channels of communication, as well as Hastings's name and logo. In exchange for RSO status, the groups must abide by certain conditions. Critical here, all RSOs must comply with the school's Nondiscrimination Policy, which tracks state law barring discrimination on the basis of religion and sexual orientation, among other categories. Hastings interprets this policy, as it relates to the RSO program, to mandate acceptance of “all comers”: RSOs must allow any student to participate, become a member, or seek leadership positions, regardless of her status or beliefs.
In 2004 the leaders of an existing Christian RSO formed petitioner Christian Legal Society (CLS) by affiliating with a national Christian association that charters student chapters at law schools throughout the country. These chapters must adopt bylaws that require members and officers to sign a "Statement of Faith" and to conduct their lives according to those principles. Among them is the belief that sexual activity should not occur outside of marriage between a man and a woman. CLS interprets its bylaws to exclude from membership anyone who engages in "unrepentant homosexual conduct" or holds religious convictions different from those in the Statement of Faith. Hastings rejected CLS's application for RSO status on the ground that the group's bylaws did not comply with Hastings's open-access policy because it excluded students based on religion and sexual orientation.
CLS filed this suit, alleging that Hastings's refusal to grant the group RSO status violated its First and Fourteenth Amendment rights to free speech, expressive association, and free exercise of religion.
JUSTICE GINSBURG DELIVERED THE OPINION OF THE COURT
. . . This case concerns a novel question regarding student activities at public universities: May a public law school condition its official recognition of a student group—and the attendant use of school funds and facilities—on the organization's agreement to open eligibility for membership and leadership to all students?
In the view of petitioner Christian Legal Society (CLS), an accept-all-comers policy impairs its First Amendment rights to free speech, expressive association, and free exercise of religion by prompting it, on pain of relinquishing the advantages of recognition, to accept members who do not share the organization's core beliefs about religion and sexual orientation. From the perspective of respondent [Hastings], CLS seeks special dispensation from an across-the-board open-access requirement designed to further the reasonable educational purposes underpinning the school's student-organization program.
In accord with the District Court and the Court of Appeals, we reject CLS's First Amendment challenge. Compliance with Hastings' all-comers policy, we conclude, is a reasonable, viewpoint-neutral condition on access to the student-organization forum. In requiring CLS—in common with all other student organizations—to choose between welcoming all students and forgoing the benefits of official recognition, we hold, Hastings did not transgress constitutional limitations. CLS, it bears emphasis, seeks not parity with other organizations, but a preferential exemption from Hastings' policy. The First Amendment shields CLS against state prohibition of the organization's expressive activity, however exclusionary that activity may be. But CLS enjoys no constitutional right to state subvention of its selectivity.
In support of the argument that Hastings' all-comers policy treads on its First Amendment rights to free speech and expressive association, CLS draws on two lines of decisions. First, in a progression of cases, this Court has employed forum analysis to determine when a governmental entity, in regulating property in its charge, may place limitations on speech. Recognizing a State's right "to preserve the property under its control for the use to which it is lawfully dedicated,"Cornelius v. NAACP Legal Defense & Ed. Fund, Inc. (1985) , the Court has permitted restrictions on access to a limited public forum, like the RSO program here, with this key caveat: Any access barrier must be reasonable and viewpoint neutral.
Second, as evidenced by another set of decisions, this Court has rigorously reviewed laws and regulations that constrain associational freedom. In the context of public accommodations, we have subjected restrictions on that freedom to close scrutiny; such restrictions are permitted only if they serve "compelling state interests" that are "unrelated to the suppression of ideas"—interests that cannot be advanced "through . . . significantly less restrictive [means]." Roberts v. United States Jaycees, (1984). "Freedom of association," we have recognized, "plainly presupposes a freedom not to associate." Insisting that an organization embrace unwelcome members, we have therefore concluded, "directly and immediately affects associational rights."
CLS would have us engage each line of cases independently, but its expressive-association and free-speech arguments merge: Who speaks on its behalf, CLS reasons, colors what concept is conveyed. . . . [W]e are persuaded that our limited-public-forum precedents adequately respect both CLS's speech and expressive-association rights, and fairly balance those rights against Hastings' interests as property owner and educational institution. We turn to the merits of the instant dispute, therefore, with the limited-public-forum decisions as our guide. . . .
We first consider whether Hastings' policy is reasonable taking into account the RSO forum's function and "all the surrounding circumstances.". . . With appropriate regard for school administrators' judgment, we review the justifications Hastings offers in defense of its all-comers requirement. First, the open-access policy "ensures that the leadership, educational, and social opportunities afforded by [RSOs] are available to all students." Just as "Hastings does not allow its professors to host classes open only to those students with a certain status or belief," so the Law School may decide, reasonably in our view, "that the . . . educational experience is best promoted when all participants in the forum must provide equal access to all students." RSOs, we count it significant, are eligible for financial assistance drawn from mandatory student-activity fees; the all-comers policy ensures that no Hastings student is forced to fund a group that would reject her as a member.
Second, the all-comers requirement helps Hastings police the written terms of its Nondiscrimination Policy without inquiring into an RSO's motivation for membership restrictions. To bring the RSO program within CLS's view of the Constitution's limits, CLS proposes that Hastings permit exclusion because of belief but forbid discrimination due to status. But that proposal would impose on Hastings a daunting labor. How should the Law School go about determining whether a student organization cloaked prohibited status exclusion in belief-based garb? If a hypothetical Male-Superiority Club barred a female student from running for its presidency, for example, how could the Law School tell whether the group rejected her bid because of her sex or because, by seeking to lead the club, she manifested a lack of belief in its fundamental philosophy?
This case itself is instructive in this regard. CLS contends that it does not exclude individuals because of sexual orientation, but rather "on the basis of a conjunction of conduct and the belief that the conduct is not wrong." Our decisions have declined to distinguish between status and conduct in this context. . . .
Third, the Law School reasonably adheres to the view that an all-comers policy, to the extent it brings together individuals with diverse backgrounds and beliefs, "encourages tolerance, cooperation, and learning among students." And if the policy sometimes produces discord, Hastings can rationally rank among RSO-program goals development of conflict-resolution skills, toleration, and readiness to find common ground. . . .
In sum, the several justifications Hastings asserts in support of its all-comers requirement are surely reasonable in light of the RSO forum's purposes.
The Law School's policy is all the more creditworthy in view of the "substantial alternative channels that remain open for [CLS-student] communication to take place.". . . In this case, Hastings offered CLS access to school facilities to conduct meetings and the use of chalkboards and generally available bulletin boards to advertise events. Although CLS could not take advantage of RSO-specific methods of communication, the advent of electronic media and social-networking sites reduces the importance of those channels. . . .
Private groups, from fraternities and sororities to social clubs and secret societies, commonly maintain a presence at universities without official school affiliation. Based on the record before us, CLS was similarly situated: It hosted a variety of activities the year after Hastings denied it recognition, and the number of students attending those meetings and events doubled. "The variety and type of alternative modes of access present here," in short, "compare favorably with those in other [limited public] forum cases where we have upheld restrictions on access." It is beyond dissenter's license, we note again, constantly to maintain that nonrecognition of a student organization is equivalent to prohibiting its members from speaking.
CLS nevertheless deems Hastings' all-comers policy "frankly absurd." "There can be no diversity of viewpoints in a forum," it asserts, "if groups are not permitted to form around viewpoints." This catchphrase confuses CLS's preferred policy with constitutional limitation—the advisability of Hastings' policy does not control its permissibility. Instead, we have repeatedly stressed that a State's restriction on access to a limited public forum "need not be the most reasonable or the only reasonable limitation.". . .
Finally, CLS asserts that the Law School lacks any legitimate interest—let alone one reasonably related to the RSO forum's purposes—in urging "religious groups not to favor co-religionists for purposes of their religious activities." CLS's analytical error lies in focusing on the benefits it must forgo while ignoring the interests of those it seeks to fence out: Exclusion, after all, has two sides. Hastings, caught in the crossfire between a group's desire to exclude and students' demand for equal access, may reasonably draw a line in the sand permitting all organizations to express what they wish but no group to discriminate in membership.
We next consider whether Hastings' all-comers policy is viewpoint neutral.
Although this aspect of limited-public-forum analysis has been the constitutional sticking point in our prior decisions, as earlier recounted, we need not dwell on it here. It is, after all, hard to imagine a more viewpoint-neutral policy than one requiring all student groups to accept all comers. An all-comers condition on access to RSO status, in short, is textbook viewpoint neutral. . . .
Hastings' requirement that student groups accept all comers, we are satisfied, "is justified without reference to the content [or viewpoint] of the regulated speech." The Law School's policy aims at the act of rejecting would-be group members without reference to the reasons motivating that behavior: Hastings' "desire to redress th[e] perceived harms" of exclusionary membership policies "provides an adequate explanation for its [all-comers condition] over and above mere disagreement with [any student group's] beliefs or biases." CLS's conduct—not its Christian perspective—is, from Hastings' vantage point, what stands between the group and RSO status. "In the end," as Hastings observes, "CLS is simply confusing its own viewpoint-based objections to . . . nondiscrimination laws (which it is entitled to have and [to] voice) with viewpoint discrimination."
Finding Hastings' open-access condition on RSO status reasonable and viewpoint neutral, we reject CLS' free-speech and expressive-association claims.
[affirmed]
JUSTICE STEVENS, CONCURRING
. . . Because the dissent has volunteered an argument that the school's general Nondiscrimination Policy [is] "plainly" unconstitutional, a brief response is appropriate.
In the dissent's view, by refusing to grant CLS an exemption from the Nondiscrimination Policy, Hastings violated CLS's rights, for by proscribing unlawful discrimination on the basis of religion, the policy discriminates unlawfully on the basis of religion. There are numerous reasons why this counterintuitive theory is unsound. Although the First Amendment may protect CLS's discriminatory practices off campus, it does not require a public university to validate or support them.
As written, the Nondiscrimination Policy is content and viewpoint neutral. It does not reflect a judgment by school officials about the substance of any student group's speech. Nor does it exclude any would-be groups on the basis of their convictions. Indeed, it does not regulate expression or belief at all. The policy is "directed at the organization's activities rather than its philosophy." Those who hold religious beliefs are not "singled out"; those who engage in discriminatoryconduct based on someone else's religious status and belief are singled out. Regardless of whether they are the product of secular or spiritual feeling, hateful or benign motives, all acts of religious discrimination are equally covered. The discriminator's beliefs are simply irrelevant. There is, moreover, no evidence that the policy was adopted because of any reason related to the particular views that religious individuals or groups might have, much less because of a desire to suppress or distort those views. The policy's religion clause was plainly meant to promote, not to undermine, religious freedom.
To be sure, the policy may end up having greater consequence for religious groups—whether and to what extent it will is far from clear ex ante—inasmuch as they are more likely than their secular counterparts to wish to exclude students of particular faiths. But there is likewise no evidence that the policy was intended to cause harm to religious groups, or that it has in practice caused significant harm to their operations. And it is a basic tenet of First Amendment law that disparate impact does not, in itself, constitute viewpoint discrimination. . . .
It is critical, in evaluating CLS's challenge to the Nondiscrimination Policy, to keep in mind that an RSO program is a limitedforum—the boundaries of which may be delimited by the proprietor. When a religious association, or a secular association, operates in a wholly public setting, it must be allowed broad freedom to control its membership and its message, even if its decisions cause offense to outsiders. Profound constitutional problems would arise if the State of California tried to "demand that all Christian groups admit members who believe that Jesus was merely human." But the CLS chapter that brought this lawsuit does not want to be just a Christian group; it aspires to be a recognized student organization. The Hastings College of Law is not a legislature. And no state actor has demanded that anyone do anything outside the confines of a discrete, voluntary academic program. . . .
[The RSO program] is not an open commons that Hastings happens to maintain. It is a mechanism through which Hastings confers certain benefits and pursues certain aspects of its educational mission. Having exercised its discretion to establish an RSO program, a university must treat all participants evenhandedly. But the university need not remain neutral—indeed it could not remain neutral—in determining which goals the program will serve and which rules are best suited to facilitate those goals. These are not legal questions but policy questions; they are not for the Court but for the university to make.
In this case, petitioner excludes students who will not sign its Statement of Faith or who engage in "unrepentant homosexual conduct." The expressive association argument it presses, however, is hardly limited to these facts. Other groups may exclude or mistreat Jews, blacks, and women—or those who do not share their contempt for Jews, blacks, and women. A free society must tolerate such groups. It need not subsidize them, give them its official imprimatur, or grant them equal access to law school facilities.
JUSTICE KENNEDY, CONCURRING
. . . Many educational institutions, including respondent Hastings College of Law, have recognized that the process of learning occurs both formally in a classroom setting and informally outside of it. Students may be shaped as profoundly by their peers as by their teachers. Extracurricular activities, such as those in the Hastings "Registered Student Organization" program, facilitate interactions between students, enabling them to explore new points of view, to develop interests and talents, and to nurture a growing sense of self. . . .
Law students come from many backgrounds and have but three years to meet each other and develop their skills. They do so by participating in a community that teaches them how to create arguments in a convincing, rational, and respectful manner and to express doubt and disagreement in a professional way. A law school furthers these objectives by allowing broad diversity in registered student organizations. But these 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. . . .
These observations are offered to support the analysis set forth in the opinion of the Court, which I join.
JUSTICE ALITO, WITH WHOM THE CHIEF JUSTICE, JUSTICE SCALIA, AND JUSTICE THOMAS JOIN, DISSENTING
The proudest boast of our free speech jurisprudence is that we protect the freedom to express "the thought that we hate."United States v. Schwimmer (1929) (Holmes, J., dissenting). Today's decision rests on a very different principle: no freedom for expression that offends prevailing standards of political correctness in our country's institutions of higher learning.
The Court's treatment of this case is deeply disappointing. . . . Brushing aside inconvenient precedent, the Court arms public educational institutions with a handy weapon for suppressing the speech of unpopular groups—groups to which, as Hastings candidly puts it, these institutions "do not wish to . . . lend their name[s]."
[There was some confusion in the record about whether Hastings applied an accept-all-comers policy or its Nondiscrimination Policy in rejecting CLS’s bid for RSO status. The majority opinion limits its analysis to an accept-all-comers policy. Section I of the dissent includes a lengthy discussion of why this assumption distorts the record.]
To appreciate how far the Court has strayed, it is instructive to compare this case with Healy v. James (1972), our only First Amendment precedent involving a public college's refusal to recognize a student group. The group in Healy was a local chapter of the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS). . . . The president of the college refused to allow the group to be recognized, concluding that the philosophy of the SDS was "antithetical to the school's policies" and that it was doubtful that the local chapter was independent of the national organization, the "published aims and philosophy" of which included "disruption and violence.". . .
The Healy Court would have none of this. Unlike the Court today, the Healy Court emphatically rejected the proposition that "First Amendment protections should apply with less force on college campuses than in the community at large." And on one key question after another—whether the local SDS chapter was independent of the national organization, whether the group posed a substantial threat of material disruption, and whether the students' responses to the committee's questions about violence and disruption signified a willingness to engage in such activities—the Court drew its own conclusions, which differed from the college president's. . . .
In the end, I see only two possible distinctions between Healy and the present case. The first is that Healy did not involve any funding, but as I have noted, funding plays only a small part in this case. And if Healy would otherwise prevent Hastings from refusing to register CLS, I see no good reason why the potential availability of funding should enable Hastings to deny all of the other rights that go with registration.
This leaves just one way of distinguishing Healy: the identity of the student group. In Healy, the Court warned that the college president's views regarding the philosophy of the SDS could not "justify the denial of First Amendment rights." Here, too, disapproval of CLS cannot justify Hastings' actions.
The Court pays little attention to Healy and instead focuses solely on the question whether Hastings' registration policy represents a permissible regulation in a limited public forum. While I think that Healy is largely controlling, I am content to address the constitutionality of Hastings' actions under our limited public forum cases, which lead to exactly the same conclusion. . . .
Once a state university opens a limited forum, it "must respect the lawful boundaries it has itself set." Hastings' regulations on the registration of student groups impose only two substantive limitations: A group seeking registration must have student members and must be non-commercial. Access to the forum is not limited to groups devoted to particular purposes. The regulations provide that a group applying for registration must submit an official document including "a statement ofits purpose," but the regulations make no attempt to define the limits of acceptable purposes. The regulations do not require a group seeking registration to show that it has a certain number of members or that its program is of interest to any particular number of Hastings students. Nor do the regulations require that a group serve a need not met by existing groups.
The regulations also make it clear that the registration program is not meant to stifle unpopular speech. They proclaim that "[i]t is the responsibility of the Dean to ensure an ongoing opportunity for the expression of a variety of viewpoints." They also emphatically disclaim any endorsement of or responsibility for views that student groups may express. Taken as a whole, the regulations plainly contemplate the creation of a forum within which Hastings students are free to form and obtain registration of essentially the same broad range of private groups that nonstudents may form off campus. That is precisely what the parties in this case stipulated: The RSO forum "seeks to promote a diversity of viewpoints amongregistered student organizations, including viewpoints on religion and human sexuality.". . .
The accept-all-comers policy is antithetical to the design of the RSO forum for the same reason that a state-imposed accept-all-comers policy would violate the First Amendment rights of private groups if applied off campus. As explained above, a group's First Amendment right of expressive association is burdened by the "forced inclusion" of members whose presence would "affec[t] in a significant way the group's ability to advocate public or private viewpoints." The Court has therefore held that the government may not compel a group that engages in "expressive association" to admit such a member unless the government has a compelling interest, "unrelated to the suppression of ideas, that cannot be achieved through means significantly less restrictive of associational freedoms."
There can be no dispute that this standard would not permit a generally applicable law mandating that private religious groups admit members who do not share the groups' beliefs. Religious groups like CLS obviously engage in expressive association, and no legitimate state interest could override the powerful effect that an accept-all-comers law would have on the ability of religious groups to express their views. The State of California surely could not demand that all Christian groups admit members who believe that Jesus was merely human. Jewish groups could not be required to admit anti-Semites and Holocaust deniers. Muslim groups could not be forced to admit persons who are viewed as slandering Islam.
While there can be no question that the State of California could not impose such restrictions on all religious groups in the State, the Court now holds that Hastings, a state institution, may impose these very same requirements on students who wish to participate in a forum that is designed to foster the expression of diverse viewpoints. . . .
I do not think it is an exaggeration to say that today's decision is a serious setback for freedom of expression in this country. Our First Amendment reflects a "profound national commitment to the principle that debate on public issues should be uninhibited, robust, and wide-open." New York Times Co. v. Sullivan (1964). Even if the United States is the only Nation that shares this commitment to the same extent, I would not change our law to conform to the international norm. I fear that the Court's decision marks a turn in that direction. Even those who find CLS's views objectionable should be concerned about the way the group has been treated—by Hastings, the Court of Appeals, and now this Court. I can only hope that this decision will turn out to be an aberration.