Boy Scouts Sue San Diego and City Council Members
Allege Violation of Constitutional Rights, Ask for Damages

San Diego, Feb. 5 -- Charging that the City of San Diego has violated their constitutional rights and breached the Desert Pacific Council’s contract to lease land at Balboa Park, the Boy Scouts of America and the Desert Pacific Council filed suit in federal court here today.

Named in the suit were the City of San Diego and six members of the City Council. The members of the City Council who were named in the suit voted for settlement with the ACLU in the Barnes-Wallace v. Boy Scouts of America case and to cancel the lease with Boy Scouts. They are Toni Atkins, Donna Frye, Ralph Inzunza, Charles Lewis, Scott Peters and Michael Zucchet. City Real Estate Assets Director William T. Griffith was also named as a defendant.

“The City left the Boy Scouts no choice but to sue them,” said George A. Davidson, attorney at Hughes Hubbard & Reed LLP and Legal Counsel for Boy Scouts of America. “The Boy Scouts cannot stand by while their constitutional rights are violated. Boy Scouts are a private voluntary organization, no different than many other nonprofits who lease property from the City on the same terms.”

The Scouts are asking the US District Court for the Southern District of California to stop the city from terminating its Camp Balboa lease and to block the City’s settlement with the ACLU in the Barnes-Wallace case.

The Scouts are also 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 Scouts seek unspecified compensatory and punitive damages as well as attorneys’ fees and court costs.

Today’s 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 the Scouts over the Scouts’ 2001 lease of campground at Balboa Park. The case, Barnes-Wallace v. Boy Scouts of America and Desert Pacific Council, alleges that the City violated the California and federal Constitutions by leasing park land to the Scouts at Balboa Park. Boy Scouts have camped in Balboa Park since March 1918. In 1957, the City granted a 50-year lease to the Desert Pacific Council. A new 25-year lease was approved by the City Council in 2001, when the ACLU’s case was already pending. The Scouts operate Camp Balboa for the benefit of all citizens in San Diego, at no cost to the City, and many youth groups unaffiliated with the Boy Scouts regularly use the camp.

The US Department of Justice, Civil Rights Division recently expressed concern about how Boy Scouts are being treated by San Diego. “Singling out the Boy Scouts for exclusion from [the City’s leasing] program based on their viewpoint would raise serious First Amendment concerns,” Special Counsel for Religious Discrimination Eric Treene wrote in a December 8, 2003 letter to Boy Scouts of America attorney George Davidson. The Civil Rights Division has an interest in protecting constitutional rights in just these sorts of cases and may seek to intervene here.

For a copy of the complaint please click here.