Do the Boy Scouts of America Have a First Amendment License to Discriminate?
(NEW YORK, October 25, 1999) — At a Washington, D.C., forum about the recent defeat of the Boy Scouts of America’s anti-gay policy, Evan Wolfson, senior staff attorney at Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund, will explain why New Jersey’s highest court correctly ruled that there is no first amendment problem with requiring the BSA to comply with anti-discrimination law. On Wednesday, October 27, Wolfson, who argued the landmark case, will debate New Jersey Assemblyman Michael Carroll at Georgetown University Law Center. They will address the question: “Dale v. Boy Scouts of America: Can Private Entities Discriminate Based Upon Sexual Orientation?” “Civil rights laws do not interfere with the Scouts’ message, program, or true purposes. The Boy Scouts’ members do not join Scouting to be a part of bigotry,” Wolfson said before the standoff, adding, “As the New Jersey Supreme Court concluded, gay scouts can be good scouts.” In August, the Court became the first state high court to lift
