U.S. District Court Upholds Montana Law School's Refusal To Fund Christian Legal Society

Liberty University removes its college Democrats group recently because it felt that Democrats (generally or generically speaking) do not uphold the University's ideals and religious beliefs.  We all remember the news about Regent University School of Law expelling a 2L student, Adam Key, for posting an unflattering photo of founder Pat Robertson on his Facebook page where it looked like Pat Robertson was shooting the bird.  Then last month the California Supreme Court left intact a lower-court ruling that allows private religious schools to expel students based on just perceived beliefs that they are gay.

So, private, religious schools, universities and law schools fight to move deeper toward restricting their membership to only those groups and people that they like in regard to political issues, moral beliefs, and the respect of their students for the religious leadership of the school.  That might be their right.  I do not know.  But, it also become apparent that religious groups cannot use the public institutions to deny those with whom they do not want to associate access to their organizations.  In short, private is private and public is public and whatever group, person or cause they wish to discriminate against on their private property, should not be allowed on the public's property.  That is probably the way it should be.

On December 17, 2007 the Christian Legal Society filed a lawsuit in federal court challenging the University of Montana School of Law's de-recognition of its local student chapter.  The lawsuit claims that this action was taken on account of the organization's Christian beliefs.  Montana Law argued it was not because of their religious beliefs but due to the fact that the Law School did not allow non-discrimination and required an open-membership policy for any student group to be recognized.  The CLS requirement to vote on anybody it admitted and to sign a statement of faith to be a voting member, violated the Law School's requirement for non-discrimination and open-membership policies for the recognition of any student group.

The CLS lost with first the federal magistrate and now the United States District Court uphelding Montana Law's right to not recognize the CLS finding that its policies in doing so were viewpoint neutral and were not intended to single out or limit CLS's rights to free expression.

From my standpoint, I do not know all of the answers to these questions, but I have always thought it is a strange argument for religion to argue that the public institutions discriminate against it and to deny its rights to free expression by prohibiting it from discrimination and denying others a right to free expression in public institutions.  Their own institutions are probably another matter.