Boy Scouts Amend Lawsuit Against City of San Diego;
Add New Violations of Civil Rights on Fiesta Island Lease

San Diego, February 24 — Boy Scouts of America and the Desert Pacific Council added new civil rights claims today in their lawsuit in federal court against the City of San Diego and members of the City Council.

The Scouts allege that the City is violating Boy Scouts’ constitutional rights by harassing Scouts and Scout leaders using Fiesta Island. Recently, Boy Scouts have been singled out for mistreatment by City employees, both on the property Desert Pacific Council leases from the City and the adjacent City parkland. To read the complaint, click here.

“By its harassment of Scouts and Scout leaders, the City is further violating the Scouts’ rights,” said Merrilee A. Boyack, a spokeswoman for the Desert Pacific Council. “The City sold out Boy Scouts by settling with the ACLU over Camp Balboa, and now the City is harassing Scouts using the parkland at Fiesta Island.”

The harassment includes thousands of dollars of parking tickets; photographing of Scout’s vehicles by City Rangers; and selective enforcement of City regulations against Scouts.

The Scouts are asking the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California to stop the City from terminating the 2001 Camp Balboa lease, block the City’s settlement with the ACLU, and cease harassing Desert Pacific Council on Fiesta Island. The Scouts are asking that the court rule that the City’s refusal to lease to the Scouts on the same terms available to other community groups violates the Scouts’ First Amendment rights of freedom of speech and freedom of association, as well as their Fourteenth Amendment right to equal protection under the law.

The lawsuit grows out of an ongoing legal battle brought about when the ACLU, representing an atheist couple and a lesbian couple, filed suit against the City and Boy Scouts. Having admitted in internal memoranda and documents filed in court that the ACLU’s claims are frivolous and that to give in to the ACLU would violate Boy Scouts’ constitutional rights, the City caved in to the ACLU agreeing to cancel the Balboa Park lease, to refuse to defend the Fiesta Island lease, and to give the ACLU a war chest of $950,000.

The City Attorney’s Office, in a September 17, 1999 Memorandum, had concluded that “the ACLU’s contentions have no merit” and “there is no basis upon which the City may lawfully terminate the Leases” even if the City assumed that Scouting is a “religious organization.” That was the same position the City had taken in the case. In documents filed in court, the City asserted that “[t]he relief sought” by the ACLU “would require the City to engage in viewpoint discrimination in violation of defendant Boy Scouts’ First Amendment rights,” and would be an “unlawful violation of defendant Boy Scouts’ Fourteenth Amendment right to equal protection, “ and “unlawful restrictions on defendant Boy Scouts’ exercise of its constitutional rights, including the rights to free speech, free exercise of religion, and freedom of association.”

Now, in agreeing with the ACLU to terminate the Boy Scouts’ lease and to pay the ACLU $950,000 in attorneys’ fees, the City takes the opposite view of the law. Boy Scouts believe the City was right the first time. The U.S. Department of Justice, Civil Rights Division recently expressed concern about how Boy Scouts are being treated by San Diego. The Civil Rights Division has an interest in protecting constitutional rights in just these sorts of cases and may seek to intervene here.

Click here to read the February 9, 2004 news release when Boy Scouts of America and the Desert Pacific Council filed their original complaint in federal court.