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Posted on 03/09/2006 9:56:37 PM PST by freedomdefender
San Francisco,CA; March 09, 2006: The California Supreme Court today ruled against the Berkeley Sea Scouts in Evans v. Berkeley, and upheld the City of Berkeley’s discriminatory campaign to force the local nonprofit youth group to end its lifelong affiliation with the Boy Scouts of America.
"The California Supreme Court’s decision today unfortunately has given the green light to activist city officials to discriminate against groups they disagree with politically," said Pacific Legal Foundation attorney Harold Johnson, co-counsel in the case. Johnson also represents Sea Scout Tonatiuh Alvarez, one of the plaintiffs and petitioners before the state Supreme Court.
"The decision turns the First Amendment on its head," said Johnson. "Berkeley can declare itself a nuclear free zone, but it can’t declare itself a First Amendment free zone. This decision licenses Berkeley to treat people as second-class citizens if they don’t sign a loyalty oath to the ruling ideology of Berkeley City Hall."
"The bottom line is that Berkeley officials are punishing the kids that participate in the Sea Scouts to make a political statement, and that’s a real tragedy," Johnson said.
"This isn’t the first time the California Supreme Court has failed to adequately protect First Amendment rights, but it’s always disappointing when a court gives its seal of approval to government discrimination and government abridgment of the freedom of association," said PLF's Johnson.
For 50 years, the Sea Scouts have taught Bay Area kids to sail, and learn carpentry and plumbing by working on the Scouts’ ship in the Berkeley Marina. Like other local nonprofits, Berkeley allowed the group to berth at the marina for free. But in 1998, Berkeley officials demanded the group sever its affiliation with the Boy Scouts. Berkeley officials were retaliating against the Boy Scouts because of the group’s traditional values and membership policies--even though the those policies are protected by the First Amendment, according to the United States Supreme Court.
When the Sea Scouts declined to end their lifelong relationship with the Boy Scouts, Berkeley ended a half-century tradition of granting the Sea Scouts a free berth and began charging the group a $500 a month fee.
As a result, the retired high school teacher who is skipper of the Sea Scouts’ ship must pay the fee out of his pocket. Before the fee was imposed, he covered the membership and activities costs for teenagers from low-income neighborhoods, something he can no longer afford to do. So while many minority, low-income Sea Scouts members have had to drop out of the popular youth program, free berthing is still being allowed for other groups, including the Berkeley Yacht Club, the Cal Sailing Club, and the Nautilus Institute.
PLF argued that Berkeley’s fee amounts to a fine for exercising First Amendment freedoms, specifically the Sea Scouts’ right to associate with the Boy Scouts of America. Under both the state and federal constitutions, government may not punish individuals or private organizations for exercising their First Amendment rights. But that is precisely what Berkeley is doing to the Sea Scouts by singling them out for exclusion from the city’s program that allows free use of the marina for nonprofits.
As Justice Roger Traynor of the California Supreme Court wrote in a famous freedom-of- expression case (Danskin v. San Diego Unified School District (1946)), once government creates a program or facility for the public, "it cannot demand tickets of admission in the form of convictions and affiliations that it deems acceptable."
About Pacific Legal Foundation Pacific Legal Foundation is a nonprofit, public interest legal organization that litigates nationwide in defense of individual rights and limited government. PLF has supported the Boy Scouts’ First Amendment rights in a number of high profile cases.
What was previously abnormal behavior is now become the religion of our government. Humanism and Socialism have become the state religion that the Constitution tried to prohibit.
Five years from now, we'll be much closer to being part of Mexico. The Supreme Court will be largely irrelevant to the tidal wave of illegal immigration being ignored by this President. This is a human wave of millions of lawbreakers so what do they care about the musings of a Supreme Court?
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No doubt the Sea Scouts berth will be occupied by the Thea Thcouts. They fags want want access to your young boys, and they won't be denied.
AND the Jihaddists, AND the Communists, AND the criminals, AND the atheists, AND the pedophiles, AND the abortionists, etc. etc.
The ACLU is a pox on the face of America and should be actively baknrupted in countersuits,
Further, groups and individuals who contribute to this obscenity should be unmasked and exposed to public view.
Mexifornia what can we say.
However, the Constitution, as interpreted by the US Supreme Court, says differently: Government can't withhold access to govt programs or benefits based on somebody's viewpoint. So charging the Sea Scouts, while giving free entry to other nonprofits that are deemed politically correct -- is unconstitutional. Just as it would be illegal to charge Republicans but let Democrats and Greens in free.
Work hard to pin this and all other destruction of America on the democRATS.
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