Supreme Court to Decide if Law School Can Ban Christian Legal Society
The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to decide whether the University of California’s Hastings College of Law violated the Constitution when it refused to recognize the Christian Legal Society as a sanctioned student group.
The law school refused funding and other benefits to the group because it does not admit nonbelievers as officers or members, according to SCOTUSblog and the Associated Press.
The legal society opposes homosexuality and “unrepentant participation in or advocacy of a sexually immoral lifestyle,” USA Today’s On Deadline blog reports.
The legal society contends the law school violated its First Amendment right of free association. The San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals had upheld the law school’s decision in a ruling that conflicts with the Chicago-based 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
The Supreme Court has been considering whether to grant the cert petition since its Sept. 29 conference, according to The BLT: The Blog of Legal Times. The case has been listed for five additional conferences, “an unusually long delay,” according to The BLT.
Updated at noon to include information from USA Today.
