Legal Issue(s): NA
Case Description
Imagine a campus where an all-comers policy “required all students groups to accept all comers.” Chaos and conflict would result. There is no workable “real world” application. Yet, when such a policy that is “viewpoint neutral” is passed and selectively enforced, it becomes a tool for viewpoint discrimination, especially against religious and conversative voices. This is how the University at Buffalo ended the Young Americans for Freedom (YAF) chapter as a recognized student group.
The University at Buffalo Student Association derecognized YAF and blocked it from generally available funding ($6,000). A lower court unconstitutionally upheld the University’s treatment of YAF, leading to the current appeal requesting that the Second Circuit overturn this decision.
The reason cited for barring YAF from campus was their association with the national conservative Young America’s Foundation. After students initially filed their lawsuit against their exclusion, the University quickly rewrote the rules (again, unconstitutionally) to require any recognized student group and its leaders to surrender their legal rights to file lawsuits.
Is YAF being singled out? Of course. How? This is where nuanced legal theories get twisted to silence viewpoints that the University at Buffalo did not want to tolerate.
The case that the lower court relied on too heavily was the poorly decided 2010 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Christian Legal Society Chapter of the University of California v. Martinez. Back then, CLS defended another student group from exclusion but lost in a 5-4 close call where even the majority, led by Ruth Bader Ginsburg, wrote that the question involved was very narrowly defined.
What question? Does the Constitution permit a law school to have an “all-comers” policy that requires religious student groups to accept as their leaders and voting members students who do not agree with those beliefs? SCOTUS said, “Yes, but” only if the policy applied to all student groups (making it viewpoint neutral). Then, they remanded the case back to the lower court to address the critical question of whether such a uniform policy had been selectively applied.
The Center filed an amicus brief in support of YAF. Read the full brief here.
