A court ruling against bigotry
by
Sue
on Sat 03 Jul 2010 09:10 AM EDT
From The New York Times ...
A public law school did not violate the First Amendment by withdrawing recognition from a Christian student group that excluded gay students, the Supreme Court ruled on Monday in a 5-to-4 decision.
The case, involving a clash between religious freedom and antidiscrimination principles, divided along familiar ideological lines, with the court's four more liberal members and Justice Anthony M. Kennedy in the majority.
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, writing for the majority, said it was constitutionally permissible for public institutions of higher education to require recognized student groups to accept all students who wished to participate in them.
Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., writing for the four dissenters, said the decision represented a triumph for the principle that there is "no freedom for expression that offends prevailing standards of political correctness in our country's institutions of higher learning."
Strike another blow against the ongoing attemps to pit equal rights for the LGBTQ community against "religious freedom" in the public realm. Religious freedom is always limited in public institutions, but that very freedom permits individuals and groups to set up their own private religious institutions. You can't have it all ways.