Membership Doesn’t Have Its Privileges: Liberty on Trial in the Martinez Case
Chuck Donovan /
Groucho Marx famously quipped to the Friar’s Club of Hollywood that he didn’t “want to belong to any club that will accept people like me as a member.” On Monday the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in a case where Groucho-like humility is nowhere in evidence.
In CLS v. Martinez, what is at issue is the right of the Christian Legal Society (CLS) to establish and receive routine school recognition for a chapter that retains and applies a statement of faith to its officers and voting members. On the other side of the courtroom aisle is the University of California Hastings College of the Law, which insists that its “nondiscrimination” policies with respect to religion and sexual orientation force CLS to grant voting-member status to any law student, regardless of whether that student holds Christian views or beliefs or engages in conduct that violates core Christian tenets. (more…)