A Drake University Law Professor says she’s concerned about the implications of the Supreme Court ruling allowing the Boy Scouts to exclude gay scouts and scoutmasters. Sally Frank has been interested in anti-discrimination cases since filing a suit seeking to open all-male eating clubs at Princeton University in the early 1980s. Frank says the Boy Scout ruling could weaken earlier rulings — such as the one requiring the Jaycees to accept women into the group. Frank says the Supreme Court was too narrow in allowing the Boy Scouts to say banning gays was there right under “free speech.”Frank says it’s a question of the group’s “expressive association” to the people they’re trying to exclude. For example, she says the courts would never force the Nazi Party to admit Jews as members. She says the Boy Scouts cannot show that anti-gay activity is essential to the their group.She says the court’s ruling is not a surprise.Frank says the surprise was the Court actually agreed to hear the case in the first place. The 5-4 Supreme Court ruling says forcing the Boy Scouts to accept homosexuals would infringe on the group’s right to choose who it associates with.
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