Title: Message
Volokh, Eugene wrote:
Hmm -- as I understand it, this isn't a simple
religious accommodation claim, in which an RA claims an exemption from
a generally applicable rule (no meetings of ideological groups in your
dorm rooms). This is a claim that the government is discriminating
against religious groups; you can organize meetings of the Bush=Hitler
Club or the Socialist Youth League in your dormroom, regardless of
whether this causes some students to feel that you're "unapproachable,"
but you can't organize Bible Study meetings.
Incidentally, to the extent that the state is resting its
argument on its power as landlord, that argument is likely to lose
under Rosenberger and Lamb's Chapel. The state must instead, I take
it, rest its argument on its power as employer. And when one sees the
state as employer, it seems hard to distinguish the "approachability"
effects of a student's being widely known as a Christian because of his
outside-the-dorm-room activities (for instance, his being known to be
the leader of a Christian student group that meets in a classroom after
hours, or even his being known to be an ordained minister) from the
approachability effects of a student's being known as a Christian
because of his in-dorm-room activity. If the government-as-employer's
concerns about approachability justify discriminating against religious
practices of students in dorm rooms, would they equally allow the
government to, for instance, refuse to hire as RAs people who are known
to be active in their religious groups outside the dorm or off-campus?
Or to take it a step further, what about non-religious activities that
might have the same effect? By the same reasoning, if an RA were an
officer in the College Democrats, couldn't that just as reasonably make
him less "approachable" to Republican students? Or let's say rather
than a bible study, he had a small humanist book club that met in his
room to discuss books. Wouldn't that make him less "approachable" to
religious students? It seems to me that the university is singling out
bible studies from a long list of in-room and out-of-room activities
that an RA might be involved with that might make them less
"approachable" in the perceptions of other students in the dorm.
Ed Brayton
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