New York Times Editorial: A Case of Discrimination
Copyright by The New York Times
Published: April 18, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/19/opinion/19mon2.html?th&emc=th
Hastings College of the Law, part of the University of California, rightly prohibits student organizations from discriminating. A Christian group that bars non-Christian and gay students sued the school for denying it funding and access to its facilities. The Supreme Court hears arguments Monday in the case. It should rule in favor of Hastings.
To qualify for official recognition, and receive money from a publicly financed university, groups at Hastings are required to adhere to the school’s nondiscrimination policy, which says that official student groups cannot refuse membership on the basis of race, religion, national origin, sexual orientation or other prohibited factors.
For years, the Christian Legal Society chapter at Hastings adhered to this policy. In 2004, it changed course and required members to sign a “statement of faith” that denied membership to students who did not share all of the society’s religious beliefs, as well as gay students. Hastings told the society that it could not remain a recognized group and receive money from the school unless it stopped discriminating.
The society refused, and when the funding stopped, it sued, claiming that its First Amendment rights of free speech, free association and free exercise of religion were being denied.
Under California law, it is illegal for postsecondary educational institutions that receive state money to discriminate on the basis of religion or sexual orientation. The school correctly determined that the law requires it to ensure that its student organization program does not permit discrimination. The school also has the right to pursue its own educational policy of promoting diversity and opposing discrimination.
Students at Hastings who want to join together in more exclusive arrangements are free to do so. They can form unofficial student groups. But Hastings is right that groups that bear its imprimatur, use its name and logo, and receive public funds must not discriminate.
In 2006, the Federal District Court that heard the case ruled for Hastings, and a three-judge panel of the San Francisco-based United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit affirmed unanimously. The panel said that the school’s rules were “viewpoint neutral,” since they imposed a requirement of openness on all student groups, and were also “reasonable.” It was right.
The Christian Legal Society is not being denied any First Amendment rights. It is being told that if it wants an official association with a public university and public money, it cannot deny gays, non-Christians or members of any other protected minority equal rights.
Washington Post Editorial: Politically correct, legally wrong
Copyright by The Washington Post
Monday, April 19, 2010
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/04/18/AR2010041802818.html
PICTURE THIS: gay student organizations forced to accept those who believe that homosexuality is an abomination. Student political groups, such as Young Republicans or Young Democrats, compelled to allow members of the other party to vote on policy platforms. A law association for African American students being told that it must let white supremacists run for leadership posts.
Sound absurd? Welcome to the University of California, Hastings College of Law. The school says that student groups that want to enjoy certain benefits must adhere to the school's nondiscrimination policy. Fair enough, except that the school's "all comers" policy requires that a group accept as voting members even those who disagree with its core principles. Organizations that comply gain the right to use campus meeting rooms and school e-mail lists and are invited to the annual student organization fair. They also have the right to apply for grants funded by student activity fees and vending machine sales.
The school lists about 60 such "recognized school organizations," including the Hastings Association of Muslim Law Students, the Hastings Jewish Law Students Association and Hastings Outlaw, a group founded by gay students.
The Christian Law Society (CLS) is not among them. Although it allows all Hastings students to attend meetings, CLS reserves voting membership and leadership posts for those who sign a declaration of faith that includes belief in Jesus Christ. The group asserts that "in the view of the clear dictates of Scripture, unrepentant participation in or advocacy of a sexually immoral lifestyle is inconsistent with an affirmation of the Statement of Faith, and consequently may be regarded by CLS as disqualifying such an individual from CLS membership." What CLS considers as disqualifying are "all acts of sexual conduct outside of God's design for marriage between one man and one woman, which acts include fornication, adultery, and homosexual conduct."
The policy did not go over well in the San Francisco-based law school, which declined to recognize CLS after concluding that its policies discriminate on the basis of religion and sexual orientation. CLS filed suit, and the Supreme Court will hear argument Monday. The law school argues that its actions are reasonable because it applies the nondiscrimination policy fairly to all groups. But the school approved the bylaws of La Raza Law Students Association even though they limited membership to "students of Raza background"; La Raza amended its bylaws after a lawyer for CLS took note.
It is one thing to require that groups that accept school funds and use school facilities give every student the opportunity to attend meetings or explore the virtues of a particular organization. But it is altogether different to require groups to accept as members or leaders even those who disagree with its central beliefs. This cuts at the core of meaningful association; penalizing a group by withholding school benefits only exacerbates the harm.
Immigration Bill Reflects a Firebrand’s Impact
By RANDAL C. ARCHIBOLD
Copyright by The New York Times
Published: April 19, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/20/us/20immig.html?th&emc=th
PHOENIX — The Arizona Senate passed one of the most stringent immigration laws in the country on Monday, marking a new level of influence for a Republican state senator who not long ago was seen by many as an eccentric firebrand.
Joshua Lott for The New York Times
A strict immigration bill drew protests Tuesday in Phoenix.
Passage of the law, which would, among other things, allow the authorities to demand proof of legal entry into the United States from anyone suspected of being in the country illegally, testified to the relative lack of political power of Arizona Latinos, and to the hardened views toward illegal immigration among Republican politicians both here and nationally.
As if to underscore how the political landscape will be changed by the law, Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, who had refused to back the most extreme anti-immigration measures, came out in support of it just hours before its passage.
“I think it is a good tool,” said Mr. McCain, who is being challenged in a primary by a conservative former congressman who is thumping him on immigration. Mr. McCain added that he believed the bill reflected frustration that the federal government had not done enough to secure the border and enforce immigration law.
The state senator who wrote the law, Russell Pearce, had long been considered a politically incorrect embarrassment by more moderate members of his party — often to the delight of his supporters. There was the time in 2007 when he appeared in a widely circulated photograph with a man who was a featured speaker at a neo-Nazi conference. (Mr. Pearce said later he did not know of the man’s affiliation with the group.)
In 2006, he came under fire for speaking admirably of a 1950s federal deportation program called Operation Wetback, and for sending an e-mail message to supporters that included an attachment — inadvertently, he said — from a white supremacist group.
But Mr. Pearce, 62, cannot be dismissed as just the party’s right-wing fringe. As chairman of the Senate’s appropriation committee, he controls whose bills are financed, and he has shown an uncanny knack to capitalize on this border state’s immigration anxiety.
While surveys show immigration is less of a hot-button issue than it was a few years ago, Republican conservatives still care about the issue. In a New York Times/CBS News poll released last week, 82 percent of self-identified Tea Party supporters said illegal immigration was a “very serious” problem.
The nightly news here is filled with stories of raids on drop houses filled with immigrants and drug-related shootouts and home invasions. Mexico’s drug violence has bloodied Nogales, Sonora, across the border from Nogales, Ariz. And just a couple of weeks ago, a southern Arizona rancher was killed on his property by someone the police suspect was involved in smuggling.
“Senator Pearce is the one to articulate things and take bullets and arrows,” said Stan Barnes, a former Republican legislator and political consultant who has supported Mr. Pearce. The issue, he said, “has electrified and energized a great many Arizonans.”
More than a few Democrats took notice that Mr. Pearce, whose district is in Mesa, a Phoenix suburb, managed to win unanimous support for the bill from House Republicans, even from some moderates who had voiced misgivings about it.
One of those moderates, State Representative Bill Konopnicki, Republican of Yuma, said planned amendments to address legal and other concerns never materialized. In the end, he said, “everybody was afraid to vote no on immigration.”
“We are going to look like Alabama in the ’60s,” said Mr. Konopnicki, who is facing a tough election and did not believe voting no would change the outcome..
In the Senate, only one Republican, Carolyn S. Allen, voted against the bill, and she is one of the few leaving office because of term limits and not seeking another post. She did not respond to a message left at her office.
The bill makes it a state crime for immigrants not to carry authorization papers, requires the police “when practicable” to check the immigration status of people they reasonably suspect are in the country illegally and allows people to sue cities and counties if the law is not being enforced.
Gov. Jan Brewer, a Republican who, like Mr. McCain, is facing primary challengers from the right, is widely expected to sign the bill, though her spokesman said she would not comment.
That the bill has gotten this far has angered advocates for immigrants, who have staged protests and sent a stream of postcards to the governor urging her to veto it.
But analysts said its legislative success may be another sign that, while the Latino population is growing here, a large number of Latinos are under age or are not citizens and so are less powerful than those in California, New Mexico or Texas.
“Right now, there are supporters of the bill who are thinking, We don’t need that vote,” said Rodolfo Espino, a political science professor at Arizona State University who studies ethnic voting trends. “With a low Hispanic voter turnout, they are not going to be made to pay a price for this.”
State Representative Ben Miranda, a Democrat and co-chairman of the legislature’s Latino caucus, agreed. In other border states, Mr. Miranda said, “there is much more political clout in the Latino community.” And Arizona feels the effects of immigration more acutely, as the state with the most arrests for illegal crossing and drug trafficking across the border.
“Arizona is the funnel to the United States,” he said. “It’s not California. It’s not Texas. It’s not New Mexico. People are in hysteria here. It is totally different.”
People on both sides of the debate see the bill as a result of the failure of Congress to overhaul the immigration system, and predict that other states, as they have in the past, will be inspired by Arizona to consider similar legislation.
Mr. Pearce, who did not return a telephone call, has said he is on a mission to rid the state of illegal immigrants and discourage others from coming.
Mr. Miranda and others wonder whether Mr. Pearce’s personal experience motivates him: his son, a Maricopa County sheriff’s deputy, was shot and wounded in 2004 by an illegal immigrant and Mr. Pearce, a former sheriff’s deputy, was shot and wounded while arresting gang members 20 years ago, he has said.
But on the floor of the Senate, which approved the bill 17 to 11, Mr. Pearce said he pushed the bill because the federal government had not done enough.
“This law is not about race,” he said. “It’s about what is illegal.”
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