BOY SCOUTS RULING WEAKENS CIVIL RIGHTS LAWS
ACLU-EM Says Ruling Perpetuates Stereotypes, Fear
St. Louis, June 28, 2000: By a 5 to 4 vote, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the Boy Scouts unwritten policy of discriminating against homosexuals. At issue was whether the Boy Scouts violated New Jersey's law prohibiting discrimination based upon sexual orientation when it terminated the membership of an assistant scoutmaster after finding out that he was gay. The five Justice majority ruled that the Boy Scouts' action was protected by the First Amendment's Freedom of Association clause. The ACLU, as well as almost every civil rights organization, vigorously opposed the Boy Scouts' freedom of association claim, maintaining that such a ruling would significantly weaken current civil rights laws.
In a strong dissent, Justice Stevens noted that the Court's ruling would, in some cases, 'render civil rights legislation a nullity.' Stevens pointed out that the Scouts did not have an expressed policy prohibiting gay members and certainly did not have as one of its missions the disapproval of homosexuality.
'This is a sharp departure from past rulings which only allowed exemptions from civil rights laws when an organization provided actual proof of a serious burden on its members' freedom of association rights,' said ACLU of Eastern Missouri Executive Director Matt LeMieux. 'This ruling says courts should simply believe any of a group's assertions concerning how compliance with civil rights laws would impair its association rights. Courts will no longer be required to determine whether the assertion is legitimate.'
Justice Stevens called this aspect of the Court's ruling an astounding view of the law that will turn the important constitutional right of freedom of association into a farce. In a separate dissent, Justice Souter said the majority opinion could 'convert the right of expressive association into an easy trump of any anti-discrimination law.'
'More troubling is the message being sent by the Court that homosexuals are so different from the rest of society that their presence alone should allow groups to escape from the enforcement of anti-discrimination laws,' added LeMieux. 'If one accepts the majority's reasoning, an openly gay male can be ostracized simply because of his openness. All a group has to do is say that it does not allow gays to join without showing how excluding gays is related to the organization's mission or the members' association rights. That is a dangerous precedent."