Tolerance and Faith Collide

Tolerance and Faith Collide

by Rebecca Burgoyne CFC Research Analyst      July 1, 2010

This weekend marks the 234^th anniversary of America’s independence, when our founders affirmed the rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.  However, in 2010, the liberty to live out one’s faith in the public square is colliding with “tolerance.”  Issues of freedom and liberty loom large in today’s culture, and such issues are front and center in the current confirmation hearings of Elena Kagan for Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court.  The protection of true liberty must be paramount when selecting justices, as the impact of liberty – or the impact of its loss – translates directly into our system of public education.    
 
Abraham Lincoln said, “The philosophy of the school room in one generation will be the philosophy of government in the next.”  While it often may seem so, life on a college campus does not exist in a vacuum; instead it is a microcosm of the community at large.  Students often study, work, and socialize together for upwards of four years – solidifying beliefs and developing habits and friendships that last a lifetime.  Sporting events, service clubs, fraternities and sororities, and common interest clubs – like environmental, ethnic, and political groups – are all part of the campus mix.  Most campus clubs and organizations are officially recognized by the university and receive preferential rights to meeting rooms, communications in campus publications, and a share of income from student fees to help support their organizations.

In 2004, the Christian Legal Society (CLS), a fellowship of Christian attorneys and law students on 165 campuses nationwide, ran afoul of the University of California Hastings Law Schools’ discrimination policy.  While anyone could attend a meeting, voting membership and officers of CLS had to sign a statement of faith and agree to hold to biblical sexual standards.  The school refused to recognize the campus organization, saying that the CLS statement of faith violated the school’s discrimination policy based on “race, color, religion, national origin, disability, age, sex, or sexual orientation.”   CLS filed suit in federal court, alleging the policy violated their right to freedom of association.  The university argued that, if the chapter was going to accept public money, it had to abide by the non-discrimination policy and accept anyone, but CLS argued that a religious group had a right to require its officers to share their faith.   

After the organization lost at both the district court and the appeals court, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear Christian Legal Society v. Martinez in 2009, and earlier this week, the United States Supreme Court determined that the California law school could indeed discriminate against a campus organization that limited its officers and members to those who held certain core beliefs.  Basing its narrow ruling on the university’s “all-comers” philosophy, a divided Court ruled 5-4, that this policy – that an organization must accept anyone as a member or officer whether or not they agree with its policies – was constitutional, if it had been applied equally to all other campus organizations.

As such, the Court did not rule that a classic nondiscrimination policy – in place in hundreds of universities – trumped an organization’s right to free speech and free association.  Justice Alito, writing for the dissent, says the real issue – ignored by the majority – was that UC Hastings’ written non-discrimination policy prohibits discrimination on specified instances – including religion and sexual orientation.  Alito wrote, “The proudest boast of our free speech jurisprudence is that we protect the freedom to express ‘the thought that we hate.’  Today’s decision rests on a very different principle: no freedom of expression that offends prevailing standards of political correctness in our country’s institutions of higher learning.”  (emphasis added)

In 1775, John Adams wrote in a letter to his wife, Abigail, that “Liberty, once lost, is lost forever.”  Today, in many legislatures and courts of law, true liberty is losing its meaning and authority in society.  In turn, new generations of citizens are unimpressed by the battles fought to gain and sustain it, and the unhindered expression of Christian faith is becoming a primary casualty.  Tolerance is no longer simply respecting another’s views, but the acceptance as true of whatever someone else believes. More than ever before in America’s history, forced tolerance is undermining pluralism, in which different and distinct groups can agree to disagree.  

Christian Legal Society v. Martinez has been remanded to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals to determine if Hastings’ “all-comers” policy has been applied campus-wide.  The CLS argues it has not.