To follow up on Gabriel's post, one thing to take away from today's ruling in CLS v. Hastings is the extent to which it gives away the show with respect to the irritating "special rights" rhetoric so often employed by conservatives to oppose the equal treatment of gays and lesbians. The party seeking "special rights" in this case, of course, was the CLS, who wanted exemptions from neutral policies that all other groups were required to follow. Public universities are not permitted to discriminate against people or groups on the basis of religion, of course, but CLS provided no evidence that either the school's nondiscrimination policy nor its "open comers" policy targeted religious groups.
There's an additional twist here. As Justice Stevens points out in his concurrence (which convincingly explains why the case should have come out the same way even had it addressed the broader question), the CLS in this case is actively seeking taxpayer money while also asking to be exempt from the school's nondiscrimination policy. The state is, again, not permitted to discriminate on the basis of viewpoint when distributing funds among groups, but as Stevens notes, there is no evidence that the nondiscrimination policy targets religious groups: "Regardless of whether they are the product of secular or spiritual feeling, hateful or benign motives, all acts of religious discrimination are equally covered. The discriminator’s beliefs are simply irrelevant."
So, in short, the CLS wants to be exempt from the school's neutral nondiscrimination policy -- but it still wants its taxpayer money. If that's not asking for a "special right," I'm not sure what is.
-- Scott Lemieux
