Home      Login


Damned If You Do, Damned If You Don’t: Balancing the Rights of Religious Organizations Against the Strong Policy Favoring Equal Rights for All Students  


Author:  Ralph Gerstein, J.D..; Lois Gerstein, MSW.


Source: Volume 16, Number 01, Fall 2014 , pp.5-7(3)




Campus Safety & Student Development

< previous article |next article > |return to table of contents

Abstract: 

Traditionally, students have had the right to form student organizations together with others who share their philosophies. If you disliked the views of certain other students, you merely had to plan your extracurricular activities in such a way as to avoid them. In the current university atmosphere, however, associating only with those who share one’s views is no longer a simple matter. Courts have ruled that universities may require student organizations that want use of university facilities to adhere to a university-wide policy of nondiscrimination. Many schools now require that if a student organization seeks to use university facilities, it must permit all persons, regardless of religious affiliation or beliefs, to run for elective office. That would mean, for example, that a secular humanist could run for the presidency of a Christian evangelical group, or that a member of a Palestinian group could run for office in a Jewish organization. This article takes a comprehensive look at the friction between the rights of religious expression and the right to an open campus community, summarizes the most important court decisions guiding college and university policy, and offers practical guidelines for where to draw the difficult line between competing rights and interests.

Keywords: Christian Legal Society of the University of California, Hastings College of Law v. Martinez; Boy Scouts of America v. Dale; Alpha Delta Chi—Delta Chapter v . Reed; viewpoint discrimination

Affiliations:  1: Editor; 2: Editor.

Subscribers click here to open full text in PDF.
Non-subscribers click here to purchase this article. $15

< previous article |next article > |return to table of contents