The CourtZero book, Chapter Twelve

See the post below for links to earlier chapters and the audio version.

Chapter Twelve is not long, but covers a lot of ground. Without further ado:

Chapter Twelve
Freedom of association
Case One: Boy Scouts
You don’t have to go home,
but you can’t camp here
In the case of Barnes-Wallace v. Boy Scouts of America, decided by a federal court in California in July of 2003, the government voided a lease that the Boy Scouts had held since 1957 to use a campground on public land, because punishing little boys is a great way for the courts to declare their disapproval of anyone with traditional religious beliefs. Here are some quotes from the opinion:
“the reasonable observer would naturally perceive the leases as an endorsement of the entire regional program of Scouting itself… [which] has, as its fundamental and pervasive purpose, the inculcation of religious belief and observance.”
“As an initial matter, the Boy Scouts is a religious organization with a "religious purpose"
“Belief in God is and always has been central to BSA's principles and purposes”
“The overwhelming and uncontradicted evidence shows that the BSA's purpose and practices are religious”
Those are some damning accusations, don’t you think? We sure are lucky to have the judges protecting us from such things.
“Specifically at issue is whether the City intended to discriminate against Plaintiffs and those similarly situated, and whether there has been actual discrimination. The Court finds that there is a dispute of material fact concerning each issue…”
What that means is that the court cannot find, as a matter of fact, that leasing a campground to the Boy Scouts has resulted in “actual discrimination” toward anyone. In fact, the court noted that no other party even wanted the Boy Scout’s lease, but that does not matter. The Boy Scouts may not camp on public land simply because its leadership, if not its members, attest to some basic religious beliefs.
This case is truly heartbreaking. Imagine a single mother who gets her perhaps fatherless son involved with Boy Scouts because she thinks her son might benefit from the principles of the Boy Scouts, only to learn that it is exactly those principles that get her son thrown off public land. We’re talking about 9, 10, and 11-year-old boys who are bearing the brunt of this judicial hissy-fit. Separate-but-equal is too good for the Boy Scouts in California, they must be excluded from the public square entirely. Contrast that with the next case.

Case Two: Are Catholics still permitted to stand in the corner and pray?

Here’s another California case, decided March 1, 2004. In Catholic Charities of Sacramento v. the Superior Court of Sacramento County, the California Supreme Court has fired a shot, not across the bow, but right at the waterline of religious freedom and the 1st Amendment. Every religious person should be very afraid of this decision. The rest of you should be afraid too; you just don’t realize it yet.

The case is noteworthy, firstly for the aggressive stance the court takes on how much they can limit First Amendment protections, and secondly for the long list of groups and attorneys that lined up to put Catholics in their place. Simply reading the list of those filing briefs against Catholic Charities is eye-opening.

Here is the situation: there is a California law, known as WCEA (Women’s Contraception Equity Act) that presupposes that women bear an unfair burden in paying for contraception, and requires employers to fix that outrage by providing contraception to their employees in their health insurance plans. The lawmakers, that is, the state legislature, did however make exceptions for “contraceptive methods that are contrary to the religious employer’s religious tenets”. It seems as if the lawmakers respected church positions like those held by Catholic Charities. What did the court do with the law that the legislature made? Read on.

Catholic Charities provides social services. They help to feed, clothe and otherwise aid the down-and-out. Catholic Charities has employees. Someone has to answer the phones and spoon out the soup, after all. The Catholic Church also happens to have a long-standing and genuine religious policy against contraception.

So someone sued Catholic Charities for not providing free contraception to their own employees. It was not a random event; Catholic Charities were targeted by a multitude of advocacy groups, including the AFL-CIO, the California Medical Association, the Progressive Jewish Alliance, the Anti-Defamation League, the Attorney General of California, and so on. Something like thirty-one different organizations were allowed to file briefs and make argument in the case against Catholic Charities, including ones you wouldn’t expect to care about what a soup kitchen in California is doing, like The Education Fund of Family Planning Advocates of New York State, Inc., and Vermont Catholics for a Free Conscience, and the Women’s Ordination Conference. If you do not yet see a pattern in how and why these court cases come about, this case might bring the point home.

Here are some quotes from the court’s ruling:

“The [statute] permits a ‘religious employer’ to offer prescription drug insurance without coverage for contraceptives that violate the employer’s religious tenets”

“The…purpose of Catholic Charities is….to offer social services to the general public that promote a just, compassionate society that supports the dignity of individuals and families, to reduce the causes and results of poverty, and to build healthy communities through social service programs…”

“…Catholic Charities serves people of all faith backgrounds, a significant majority of [whom] do not share [its] Roman Catholic faith.”

To make a long and tortured story short, the court decided that providing social services is a “secular” activity, thus the Catholic Church cannot, as long as it is trying to help people, claim that the government cannot interfere with their free exercise of religion. Holy cow. Unholy cow, even. Because feeding the hungry is deemed “secular” by the court, the Catholic Church must either stop feeding the hungry or turn its back on its religious beliefs. That’s a great choice, and that helps out everyone, right?

So what religious beliefs and practices of the Catholic Church might be protected, then, by the United States Constitution? If you read this opinion carefully, the answer is: none. Do not reach out to your community, do not provide social services; you may however stand in the corner and finger your rosary. Otherwise, do as we say.

Boy Scouts part two:
Haven’t you brats taken the hint?

The Boy Scouts of America are also having a bad time in the courts. Really, in the age of the Global War on Terrorism, it blows me away that people are so threatened by boy scouts. What kind of a nation of scoutophobes do we have to be to spend so much time suing the scouts? In case after case, in state after state, the scouts are chased like they were terrorists, and your den dues are increasingly spent on legal defense instead of s’mores and new tents.

On July 9, 2003, the federal 2nd Circuit decided the case of Boy Scouts of America v. Wyman. In March of 2004, the United States Supreme Court made the decision not to hear the case, which means that the Supreme Court has decided that the 2nd Circuit decision is the law of the land.

It comes down to this: in Boy Scouts of America v. Dale, decided by the Supreme Court in the year 2000, the Court came up with the startling conclusion that people are allowed to hang out with whomever they want to hang out with. The scouts happen to want to hang out with others who share their values. In particular, they don’t want homosexual scout leaders to mentor young boys. You may find that offensive, and that is fine if you do. The point is that the scouts are free to be offensive to gays if they want to be, and vice versa. Please remember that the point of this book is specifically not about using the courts to change social or personal values. The result of the common-sense decision of the court in the Dale case resulted in a firestorm blitzkrieg jihad upon the boy scouts. In Connecticut, and in countless other towns, counties and states, the scouts have been removed from “workplace charitable contribution” campaigns. Most of you know what those are: your supervisor tells you to contribute at least a dollar a month to something on the charities lists, or else…well; you’re just not a team player if you don’t.

In Connecticut, as in other places, the government took the boy scouts off of the list of charities to which its government employees may contribute because the State of Connecticut finds the boy scouts offensive for not allowing openly homosexual men to be scoutmasters.

The Court in Wyman found a way around the Supreme Court’s Dale decision by coming to the conclusion that the State of Connecticut’s decision to exclude the scouts from the charities list was not a decision based on the viewpoint of the scouts. It is baffling reasoning, and it doesn’t fool any of us into thinking that the Wyman court ever had any intention to follow the law.