SFL Joins Supreme Court Amicus Brief

Yesterday, SFL joined the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) in an amicus brief submitted to the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) for the upcoming case Christian Legal Society v. Martinez.  The brief argues in favor of the Christian Legal Society’s (CLS) right to freedom of association, which includes the right to limit voting membership to individuals who endorse the organization’s core beliefs.  As FIRE’s release summarizes: “the Ninth Circuit’s decision let Hastings demand that all groups accept “all comers” as voting members, which leaves groups with minority viewpoints subject to hostile takeovers by students in the majority.”"

FULL BRIEF HERE

The case at hand before SCOTUS is certainly one that reasonable advocates of liberty not only could, but do disagree about. CLS may not be the kind of group that represents the values of liberty and the policy in question is one that many, if not all of us, in SFL’s leadership disagree with. However, the question being put before SCOTUS deals with the basic rights of students and is of such serious consequence that SFL must stand up for the rights of students with which we as individuals may disagree.

From FIRE’s release: “If student organizations cannot require that their leaders and voting members actually share the group’s viewpoints, as the Ninth Circuit’s ruling would have it, freedom of association on college campuses will be stripped of all meaning,” said Robert Shibley, FIRE’s Vice President. “Freedom of association means the right of individuals to form groups around shared beliefs, not the right of the state to dictate what those groups’ beliefs should be.”

SFL fully agrees with Mr. Shibley and so joined the brief to defend freedom of speech and association of students. While the brief provides a complete account of why we chose to support CLS in this case and should be read in full to understand our rationale (especially the legal rationale which is not articulated in this post), the point is simple: in order for students to freely associate and engage in First Amendment protected freedom of speech through those associations, student organizations at public universities must be able to set down principles and elect people to lead the organization who support those principles. Requiring student groups to allow for leaders who oppose the mission of the group is tantamount to requiring groups to allow for the dissolution of their principles and mission.

With a decade of experience under its belt, FIRE has seen the troubling threats to freedom of speech and expression that have threatened minority voices on campus and which could threaten the voices of pro-liberty students in the future. Consider the case of the Central Michigan University Young Americans for Freedom (pp. 8-10) who in 2007 learned that a group of students on campus wanted to shut down the organization and so were planning to join YAF, elect themselves to the leadership, and then dissolve the organization. Many of the groups in SFL’s network have already expressed concern about the chance that this could happen to them and have taken measures to prevent it from happening. A decision by SCOTUS to that allows public universities to require that student organizations not only accept individuals into its ranks, but give authority over the organization to all individuals, even those who have beliefs antithetical to those of the organization, makes no sense and expressly undermines the freedom of association of students (in the CMU YAF case, the result would have been the literal elimination of the association by the dissolution of YAF). There are many other cases in the brief that illustrate the threat posed by a SCOTUS ruling against the freedom of association of student groups, but this one should illustrate the very real and likely consequences that may affect groups with minority voices on campus.

The point is eloquently written on page 26 of the brief: “A decision by this court to uphold the Ninth Circuit’s erroneous ruling will send a message to public universities across the country that they may employ their nondiscrimination policies to deny the freedom of association of student organizations, thereby ignoring their obligations under the First Amendment. Given that universities have already demonstrated a proclivity to apply nondiscrimination policies against the associational rights of ideological student groups, a decision by this Court in favor of such practices will further embolden universities.”

The question at hand here is not the legitimacy of public schools or student fees.  These institutions exist, and right or wrong, we must deal with them as such. What we are dealing with in this case is whether the state has the authority to dictate what student groups believe, to favor those the state likes and eliminate those the state does not like.  Even if we do not like the principles of those groups whose rights are infringed, to truly be students for liberty, we must support the liberty of those that we as individuals may not agree with. This is such a case.

We encourage you to read the full brief here and check out FIRE’s announcement about the brief here.  We are honored to join FIRE in the defense of students’ rights.