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Lahmann v. Grand Aerie of Fraternal Order of Eagles10/12/2005
of Rotary Int'l. It inquired whether the organization engaged in expressive activity; if so, whether requiring the organization to accept the person who was denied membership would interfere in a significant way with that expressive activity; and, if so, whether that interference was accomplished in the least intrusive manner and served a compelling interest. Dale, 530 US at 647-48. The Court determined that the Boy Scouts, whose stated mission was the inculcation and transmission of values, including, centrally, the value that homosexuality was immoral and unclean, engaged in expressive activity. Id. at 651. Because the antihomosexual value was central, frequently asserted, and long-standing, and because accepting an acknowledged homosexual as a scout leader would send a message of acceptance that was contrary to that value, such acceptance would significantly interfere with the organization's ability to express its message. Id. at 654-56. Finally, the Court concluded that " he state interests embodied in New Jersey's public accommodations law do not justify such a severe intrusion on the Boy Scouts' right to freedom of expressive association." Id. at 659.
The Eagles' reliance on Dale is misplaced. In this case, the slight impairment to the Eagles' expressive activity does not approximate the level of harm that triggered the Court's concern in Dale. Whereas, according to the Court, requiring admission of homosexuals to the Boy Scouts would be tantamount to promoting homosexual conduct, a clear violation of that organization's values, the Eagles has not demonstrated any similar harm that accepting women would inflict on its effort or goals--"liberty, truth, justice, equality, for home, for country, and for God." Rather, as in Roberts and Bd. of Dirs. of Rotary Int'l, "the enforcement of [the act] would not materially interfere with the ideas that the organization sought to express." Dale, 530 US at 657. In any case, even if application of the act worked a significant impairment on the Eagles' association rights, the state's compelling interest in remedying gender discrimination by means of the Public Accommodations Act far exceeds any harm to the Eagles' expressive association.
IV. CONCLUSION
The Public Accommodations Act applies to the Eagles because, as the trial court found and the Eagles do not dispute, the organization provides amusement and civic services, and it offers them unselectively to the male public. Enforcing the act so as to require the Eagles to consider women for membership on the same terms that they consider men does not violate the organization's members' rights under the state constitution's guarantee of religions freedom, nor does it violate their right freely to assemble to consult for their common good; neither case law, text, context, nor history provides any reason to apply section 26 to groups engaged principally in activities outside of the political realm. Moreover, applyi
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