Berkeley Wins Boy
Scouts - Marina Case
By AP from the
NYTimes on the Web, March 9, 2006
SAN FRANCISCO -- The city of
Berkeley can charge marina fees to youth sailors connected with the Boy Scouts
of America in response to the Scouts' discriminatory policies, the state Supreme
Court ruled Thursday.
The court unanimously rejected claims by the Berkeley Sea Scouts that the city
violated the group's free speech and freedom of association rights by charging
it berthing fees, which nonprofit groups that comply with a 1997
nondiscrimination law do not pay.
The city revoked the group's subsidies in 1998 because the Boy Scouts bar
atheist and gay members. It's one of several cases in which federal, state
and local governments have distanced themselves from the Scouts.
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2000 that the Boy Scouts' membership policies
are legal, but the state high court ruled that governments remain able to deny
benefits to organizations that discriminate.
''What the California Supreme Court said was that private clubs can
discriminate, but the taxpayers don't have to fund that discrimination,''
Berkeley City Attorney Manuela Albuquerque said.
Scouts spokesman Bob Bork called the ruling ''another in a continuing legal
backlash against the Boy Scouts for asserting and winning its constitutional
rights in the United States Supreme Court.''
The Sea Scouts are a branch of the Boy Scouts that teaches sailing, carpentry
and plumbing. City officials had told the group that it could retain its
berthing subsidy if it broke ties with the Boy Scouts or disavowed the policy
against gays and atheists, but the Sea Scouts refused.
The Sea Scouts pay $500 a month to berth one boat at the Berkeley Marina; the
group removed two other boats because it could not afford the rent. The
group has about 40 members, down from as many as 100 before the subsidy was
removed.
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