Changes
*The exclusive use of a centralized mailbox located in Campus Center ....
A relatively small fraternity named "Chi Iota Colony," and identified by the court as mostly Jewish, excluded females. Its reasons included a statement that admitting women might lead to romantic relationships between members, causing "inevitable jealousies and other conflicts."
The fraternity sought official recognition and, when denied that it sued for a court order based on its [[First Amendment]] rights of association. The trial court agreed, issuing an injunction against the school forcing it to recognize this fraternity. The school appealed.
The [[Second Circuit]] held that the associative rights of the fraternity did not trigger the difficult-to-satisfy strict scrutiny of regulations against it. Instead, the Court created a new balancing test. "To determine whether a governmental rule unconstitutionally infringes on an associational freedom, courts balance the strength of the associational interest in resisting governmental interference with the state's justification for the interference." The Court held that this will require an assessment of:
(1) the strength of the associational interests asserted and their importance to the plaintiff;
(2) the degree to which the rule interferes with those interests;
(3) the public interests or policies served by the rule imposed; and
(4) the tailoring of the rule to effectuate those interests or policies."
The Court concluded that "[t]he more important the associational interest asserted, and the more the challenged governmental rule burdens the associational freedom, the more persuasive must be the state's reasons for the intrusion, and the more precisely tailored the state's policy must be."
The Court held that the fraternity had a right to meet and exist, but did not have a right to recognition and funding by the public college. It overturned the lower court's injunction against the school.
[[category:Circuit Cases]]
