Boy Scouts of America v. Dale
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Introduction
The First Amendment, created in 1791 along with nine other amendments in the Bill of Rights, states that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble.” The New Jersey Law Against Discrimination was first introduced in 1945, prohibiting owners and managers from directly or indirectly denying accommodation or service to individuals “on account of race, creed, color, national origin, or ancestry.” The law was amended in 1991 to include sexual orientation. Boy Scouts of America v. Dale explores the First Amendment’s right to expressive association and the New Jersey Law Against Discrimination, both of which are vital in understanding and distinguishing the tension between the right of free expressive association and the state’s interest in protecting minorities from discrimination.
Facts
In Boy Scouts of America v. Dale, the Boy Scouts of America revoked James Dale’s membership in the organization. Despite being a Boy Scout for ten years and achieving one of the organization’s highest honors by becoming an Eagle Scout, the Boy Scouts claimed that by leading the Rutgers University Lesbian/Gay Alliance and openly expressing his homosexual orientation, Dale neither embodied nor modeled the values that the organization wanted to demonstrate to its young people. After attending a seminar about the needs of homosexual teenagers and being identified on the front page of a newspaper as the copresident of the Lesbian/Gay Alliance, Dale’s membership in the Boy Scouts was revoked. In 1992, Dale filed a complaint about the Boy Scouts in the New Jersey Superior Court.
Legal Background
Dale argued that the Boy Scouts’ decision was a violation of New Jersey law, claiming that an organization couldn’t discriminate based on sexual orientation in public accommodations. Since the Boy Scouts of America had several general connections to members around the country and public organizations, the New Jersey public accommodation law should be in effect. The Boy Scouts of America argued that because they were a private organization, New Jersey public accommodation law did not apply to them; the organization could prevent Dale from being an adult leader, and the First Amendment permitted the Boy Scouts of America to exclude people based on sexual orientation. In short, Dale argued for anti-discrimination in public accommodations while the Boy Scouts argued that it was their constitutional right as a private organization to decide who could and could not be a member of the organization.
Before eventually reaching the United States Supreme Court, Boy Scouts of America v. Dale made its way through the New Jersey Superior Court’s Chancery Division, where Dale first filed a complaint against the Boy Scouts, the New Jersey Superior Court’s Appellate Division, and the New Jersey Supreme Court. The Chancery Division granted summary judgement to the organization, stating that the Boy Scouts, as a private group, were exempt from New Jersey’s public accommodation law. The Appellate Division reversed the Chancery Division’s ruling, rejecting the constitutional claims of the Boy Scouts. The New Jersey Supreme Court affirmed the Appellate Division’s ruling, stating that the Boy Scouts, although a private organization, were not exempt from New Jersey law. The court explained that the Boy Scouts destructively discriminated against Dale when they revoked his membership to the organization, and further elaborated that Dale’s sexuality and membership wouldn’t affect the Scouts’ right of expressive association. The New Jersey Supreme Court applied the tests developed in Roberts v. United States Jaycees and Rotary International v. Rotary Club of Duarte. Those tests entailed asking first, how “private” an association is, and second, whether the association is expressing a view that is central to the organization’s identity.
Holding & Reasoning
In a 5-4 majority opinion written by Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, the United States Supreme Court sided with the Boy Scouts of America and reversed the lower courts, stating that Dale’s use of the New Jersey Law Against Discrimination violated the Boy Scouts’ First Amendment right to freedom of association. The Supreme Court understood the Boy Scouts of America as against homosexuality and found that having a homosexual leader could spread a message that the Boy Scouts of America condoned homosexuality, which it did not.
Defined in NAACP v. Patterson, the right to expressive association recognizes that people can come together for expressive and often political reasons. Like much of the U.S. Constitution, the text does not directly address expressive association, but courts have understood that protection as part of the First Amendment, which is a fundamental right.
Two precedents for Boy Scouts of America v. Dale were the rulings in Roberts v. United States Jaycees (1984) and Rotary International v. Rotary Club of Duarte (1987). Both were unanimous decisions. The Jaycees, a leadership training and civic organization for people aged eighteen to forty, had excluded women;41 so too had the Rotary Club. In both cases, the Court held that state public accommodation laws could be applied to require that women not be excluded. This precedent was specifically referenced by the New Jersey Supreme Court in its Boy Scouts of America v. Dale ruling, which it viewed as consistent with the precedent. However, the United States Supreme Court found that Jaycees and Duarte did not dictate ruling in favor of Dale. Allowing women into the Jaycees and the Rotary Club, the Court stated, “would not materially interfere with the ideas that the organization sought to express,” whereas Dale’s presence in the Boy Scouts would.
Analysis
The ruling of Boy Scouts of America v. Dale was protective of the First Amendment right of the Boy Scouts of America, ultimately allowing for the Boy Scouts to continue their right to free associative expression. While the case’s outcome is different from that of the precedent cases Roberts v. United States Jaycees and Rotary International v. Rotary Club of Duarte, the Supreme Court in Boy Scouts of America v. Dale was constitutionally justified to rule in favor of the private organization because Dale directly contradicted the Boy Scouts’ message to its youth. Applying the New Jersey public accommodation law to the Boy Scouts of America’s decision to revoke Dale’s membership isn’t constitutional; it severely impedes the organization from freely associating.
However, blatant discrimination based on sexual orientation shouldn’t be tolerated, despite it being constitutionally acceptable and the New Jersey law being inapplicable to this case. While it isn’t the Court’s place to argue about the organization’s message to its youth, the organization shouldn’t discriminate based on sexual orientation. In his dissent, Justice Stevens, joined by Justices Souter, Ginsburg and Breyer, noted that “every state law prohibiting discrimination is designed to replace prejudice with principle,” ultimately stating that the Court’s final decision disregarded what New Jersey was trying to accomplish. Stevens further explained that the New Jersey law does not impose serious burdens on the Boy Scouts of America, nor does it force the organization to spread any unwanted messages. Later in 2013, after openly being criticized for blatantly discriminating against the LGBTQ community, the Boy Scouts of America formally announced that the organization would no longer be barring LGBTQ community members from participating.