CAMPUS

Court Upholds Forced Association on Campus

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled that a California law school is not required to recognize religious groups that have closed or discriminatory membership requirements. In essence, this means that the college can defund any campus religious group that requires its members to follow a particular faith.

David French over at Phi Beta Cons sums up why this a horrible precedent:

From a common-sense standpoint, this is absurd. Imagine telling a Baptist church that its search for a new pastor had to include equal consideration of Buddhist or Hindu candidates. Imagine telling a synagogue that they were engaged in unlawful “discrimination” if they categorically refused to permit imams from functioning as rabbis. How can student guarantee that they can maintain their distinctive voice if each group essentially has to be open to all students, regardless of those students’ beliefs or intentions?

Of course, the ruling extends beyond religious groups to any campus club or organization. Maybe it’s a reductio ad absurdum, but I wonder what this kind of “non-discriminatory environment” would look like at large. For example, the student publication I run at the University of Oregon has loose membership requirements, aside from my explicit “no hippie nonsense” rule. Could the magazine be defunded for not printing or associating with hippie nonsense?

Likewise, could I go to the radical leftist paper on campus and demand to have my articles on laissez-faire capitalism printed? Like French notes, what happens to distinctive voice when you have no control over membership? Or, as the late great Groucho Marx once said, “I don’t care to belong to any club that would have me as a member.”