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Lahmann v. Grand Aerie of Fraternal Order of Eagles10/12/2005
cation of the act abridges their members' expressive association rights under the First Amendment, because their membership policy to exclude women is itself "expressive" and that admission of women in the aerie would impair its secret rituals in which aerie members address one another as "Brother" and refer to "manly character" and "Brotherhood." The trial court ruled that the Eagles' claim could not meaningfully be distinguished from a similar claim that was rejected by the United States Supreme Court in Roberts. We agree.
The relevant facts in Roberts and in the present case are strikingly similar. Like the Eagles, the Jaycees were a national organization whose membership was limited to males, with an associated, nonvoting membership available to women. Roberts, 468 US at 613. Like the present case, the litigation in Roberts arose under a state statute prohibiting discrimination in public accommodations. Like Oregon's act, the Minnesota Human Rights Act broadly defined "public accommodation" as "'a business, accommodation, refreshment, entertainment, recreation, or transportation facility of any kind, whether licensed or not, whose goods, services, facilities, privileges, advantages or accommodations are extended, offered, sold, or otherwise made available to the public.'" Id. at 615 (quoting Minn Stat ยง 363.03 (1982)). Like the Eagles, the Jaycees maintained that the civil rights statute, by compelling them to admit women, violated members' freedom of association. Id. at 612.
The Court first held that the First Amendment did, in fact, protect association: "An individual's freedom to speak, to worship, and to petition the government for the redress of grievances could not be vigorously protected from interference by the State unless a correlative freedom to engage in group effort toward those ends were not also guaranteed." Id. at 622. Thus, the right to associate is "implicit in the right to engage in activities protected by the First Amendment." Id. The Court also acknowledged that, in some cases, government interference with a private organization's internal policies could interfere with members' rights to associate for the exercise of free expression: "There can be no clearer example of an intrusion into the internal structure or affairs of an association than a regulation that forces the group to accept members it does not desire." Id. at 623.
The Court nonetheless emphasized that, even in such cases, the right to associate for expressive purposes is not absolute; rather, its restriction "may be justified by regulations adopted to serve compelling state interests, unrelated to the suppression of ideas that cannot be achieved through means significantly less restrictive of associational freedoms." Id. Applying those precepts to the Jaycees, the Court determined that the state's goal of "eradicating discrimination against its female citizens," a central purpose of the statute, "plainly serves com
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