Tufts University Grad Now Law Prof On Concerning Religious Liberty Situation At Tufts

First Amendment Prof (Speech, Press, Association, Religion Where First Amendment freedoms collide with other values. Come and speak your mind )  looks like it is going to be an interesting blog to follow.

The blogger is written by the  now  visiting Penn  Law Prof Erica Rachel Goldberg .

 She also was a FIRE  former Justice Robert H. Jackson Legal Fellow . FIRE has been on the front lines defending various First amendment rights on the American college campus. In fact Erica Goldberg wrote this good law review article Amending Christian Legal Society v. Martinez: Protecting Expressive Association as an Independent Right in a Limited Public Forum which is somewhat related to the overall issues of this post.


FIRE has been active in two cases involving freedom of religion and association that have been  of concern to many recently . First there is the case of the unfortunate events at Vanderbilt University in which as part of their work they produced this great vid. Sadly these same events are now happening at Tufts University which I have blogged on recently.   Goldberg is a graduate of Tufts and in her first post on her blog she tackles this subject head on. See here post Freedom of Association/Discrimination which she lays out 8 points on the Tufts situation which I very much agree with. All her short points are important and I think they are similar to the situation Vandy is facing.   Let me highlight four of them:

 1. Tufts is a private university, and, as such, does not need to respect freedom of association.

2. That said, Tufts really SHOULD respect freedom of association

6. All comers policies, which require every student group to accept all members, are constitutional even at public universities because they do not discriminate against any particular viewpoint, but they severely limit the values underlying freedom of association.

8. I find that people often lose their sense of principle when issues they care about are on the table- as if the existence of a right depends on the exercise of that right. In this case, in the clash between liberty and equality, where the government isn't actually doing the speaking or discriminating (student groups involve private speech in a limited public forum), I think liberty should win. However, as Tufts is a private institution, it can place whatever value on freedom of association it wishes, as long as it's up front about it. This is why a university like Liberty, which is straightforward about not respecting certain First Amendment values, gets more leeway in my opinion in restricting freedom of association.

I think that last part I bolded is very important. Some religious Universities because of their mission such as a religious school might have an affirmative duty to prohibit some official clubs on their campus. For instance I would deem it wise that Notre Dame might not approve a DOMERS FOR EUTHANASIA student group. But the purpose of doing that would be very up front and apparent..

It seems the student Govt at  TUFTS and the administration Vandy as  more private secular Universities are not being quite "straightforward".