The Supreme Court ruled 5-4 on Monday, June 28, that the Hastings College of Law (University of California), a public institution, can refuse recognition to any student group that has belief or conduct standards for its leadership. The case involved a Christian Legal Society student chapter. The ruling claims that Hastings’ policy fosters tolerance and diversity. But diversity is undermined when distinctive viewpoints cannot be maintained.

The Court ruled that the Hastings College of Law was within its rights not to recognize the Christian Legal Society student chapter on campus as an official student group. The chapter’s sins? It requires voting members and officers to adhere to the CLS Statement of Faith that, among other things, includes a prohibition on sex outside of man-woman marriage.

The decision didn’t end the dispute. There will be another round in which the CLS group will argue that the Hastings’ policy was applied inconsistently and was adopted in order to ban this Christian group. Moreover, it seems that Hastings may be the only public educational institutions with its specific policy about open membership by student groups. So this loss does not necessarily mean that religious student groups at every public college, university, and law school will soon be excluded from official student-group status and be barred from the benefits of that status.

What was Hastings’ policy? The law school requires all student groups to admit everyone without limits: all students, whether they agree with an organization’s beliefs and aims or not, must be allowed not only to attend meetings but also to vote for leaders, run for leadership, and lead the organization. (The actual policy, CLS claims was different: other groups were allowed to have selective memberships but just not CLS.) Such a policy supposedly produces tolerant lawyers who understand every point of view, can defend their views against other views, can get along with others, etc., etc.

In her majority opinion, Justice Ruth Ginsberg thought all of this was just fine and wonderful. The “all-comers” policy “is a reasonable, viewpoint-neutral condition” applied to student groups and is therefore constitutional. The “all-comers” policy, “to the extent it brings together individuals with diverse backgrounds and beliefs, encourages tolerance, cooperation, and learning among students.”

There is a small problem: how long will there be a diversity of views if no organization can require that those who speak for it and make decisions concerning what it will do are actually committed to its philosophies and goals? Under an “all-comers” policy, Christian students could take over the Humanist Society, global-warming skeptics the Sierra Club, pro-lifers the Planned Parenthood support group, tea-partiers the Democratic club.

But not really. It is only groups whose views are considered objectionable by most students that are likely to be hijacked in this way. It doesn’t take a paranoid person to suspect that such an “all-comers” policy—which at the moment is exceeding rare—will drive out some kinds of groups, and some kinds of diverse views, and not others. Chief among the targets: religiously and culturally conservative student groups.

In his dissenting opinion, Justice Samuel Alito stressed how destructive the court majority’s views are. The decision, he said, rests on the principle of “no freedom for expression that offends prevailing standards of political correctness in our country’s institutions of higher learning. . . . I do not think it is an exaggeration to say that today’s decision is a serious setback for freedom of expression in this country.”

Whatever the final outcome for the CLS chapter at Hastings, when it comes to actual diversity and upholding the First Amendment, it is Justice Alito, and not Justice Ginsberg, who got it right.

Follow developments and commentary at the Christian Legal Society website: http://www.clsnet.org/