Insider Higher Ed has published what may be the worst opinion piece regarding Christian Legal Society v. Martinez. Given the extremely heavy competition, this is quite an achievement . . . albeit a dubious one.
The essay’s author, John K. Wilson, bizarrely contends that public universities will be required to “enforce” a religious student group’s own leadership and voting membership criteria. He seems to simply misunderstand the nature of the relationship between student groups and universities. He imagines various hypothetical conflicts between individual students and student groups, e.g., over whether a particular student truly agrees with the CLS statement of faith or is “exemplifying the highest standards of morality as set forth in Scripture.” So far, so good. One can certainly imagine such disagreements arising.
But then Mr. Wilson simply assumes that the schools themselves would be called upon to resolve such disagreements. I have absolutely no clue why he thinks that. No chapter of CLS has ever asked a law school to resolve that sort of disagreement, no law school has ever offered to do so, and no law school has ever argued that it needs to be the resolver of such disputes. This is truly an odd argument for denying CLS recognition or for concluding it should lose its dispute with Hastings.
Mr. Wilson then argues that a university must force a student group “to accept members who disagree with its mission.” Why? According to Mr. Wilson, “in order to protect every student group.” Huh? Best I can, Mr. Wilson is arguing that democracy must prevail within every group; that majorities must be free to ignore pre-existing leadership requirements; and that those who reject a group’s beliefs and mission must be permitted to be voting members of the group. Without all these ingredients, “democracy” suffers. Again, I can only say that this is a bizarre argument — like the whole column.
