Supreme Court Hears Argument on Student Speech Case
The United States Supreme Court heard oral argument on March 19 in Morse v. Frederick, a potentially important case exploring the First Amendment limits on the power of public schools to punish student speech.
The principal of a Juneau, Alaska, public high school suspended student Joseph Frederick for unveiling a banner reading "Bong Hits for Jesus" during an Olympic torch relay. The school had released students from school to witness the event. Frederick apparently did not intend to convey any particular message with his banner; he instead simply hoped to garner attention, particularly from the television cameras that were present. Frederick was across the street from school property when he displayed the banner. The principal suspended him on the ground that the banner encouraged illegal drug use, something contrary to the message the school tries to send students. Frederick sued, and the Court of Appeals held that the principal's action violated his Free Speech Clause rights.
Without supporting Frederick's juvenile stunt, the CLS Center for Law & Religious Freedom filed a friend of the Court brief to alert the Court to the problems that might arise if the Court ruled in the school district's favor. In their briefs, the district and some of its supporting amici sought undue power over student speech. The CLS brief argued that if the Court conferred such broad power on public school officials, they would almost certainly employ that power to suppress controversial religious expression, including the right to associate around shared convictions and moral standards.
CLS Center Files Brief Supporting Health Care Conscience Rights
Christian Legal Society's Center for Law & Religious Freedom urged the California Supreme Court to respect the conscience rights of health care providers in a friend of the court brief filed on March 30.
Dr. Christine Brody is a California physician specializing in treating infertility. She declined to perform intrauterine insemination upon Guadalupe Benitez on the ground that Benitez was not married. Benitez was in a same-sex relationship. Benitez sued Dr. Brody, invoking California's Unruh Act, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of "sexual orientation" (among other things) in business establishments. The case reached the California Supreme Court, which will decide whether punishing Dr. Brody violates her constitutionally protected right to the free exercise of religion.
The CLS Center filed an amicus curiae brief with the court in support of Dr. Benitez.
Victory for Faith-Based Social Service Providers Partnering with Government
On March 20, a federal court dismissed a lawsuit against the Northwest Marriage Institute (NMI), a faith-based social service provider, challenging its receipt of federal grants from the Department of Health and Human Services and the Institute for Youth Development.
The lawsuit was brought by thirteen strict separationist taxpayers who argued that the First Amendment's Establishment Clause required the government to discriminate against religious providers like NMI in its funding decisions. Attorneys with the Christian Legal Society intervened on behalf of the Institute for Youth Development, which had provided funding to NMI. The case was Christianson v. Leavitt.
The court's order followed the U.S. Supreme Court’s rulings that institutions are not prohibited from participation in social welfare programs simply because of their religious mission. The court also observed that religious organizations like NMI, which provide resources and counseling to support healthy marriages, benefit society regardless of religious affiliation.
The Center for Law & Religious Freedom is the advocacy ministry of the Christian Legal Society, which is the professional association founded in 1961 of Christian attorneys, judges, law professors, law students, and friends throughout the United States.
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