Law Profs Threaten Boycott of Meeting Due to Hotel Owner's Views
Updated: Four groups representing law professors and legal writing professionals are threatening to boycott the annual meeting of the Association of American Law Schools because of the views of the man who owns the hotel where the meeting may take place.
The meeting is slated to be held in January at the San Diego Manchester Grand Hyatt. Its owner, Douglas Manchester, has donated $125,000 to an initiative to ban same-sex marriages in California, the National Law Journal reports.
The National Law Journal article lists the groups threatening a boycott as the Society of American Law Teachers, the Legal Writing Institute, the AALS Section on Legal Writing Research and Reasoning, and the AALS Section on Teaching Methods. The groups say Manchester’s views conflict with their policies of nondiscrimination based on sexual orientation.
But the executive director of the Society of American Law Teachers, Hazel Weiser, told the ABA Journal that her group has not threatened a boycott, even though it has objected to the meeting location. SALT is seeking a change in location, and if that’s not possible, it is asking AALS to limit activities at the hotel.
Updated at 5:30 a.m. on Aug. 8 to include comments from Hazel Weiser of SALT.
