Scouts win in Oregon Supreme CourtThe Boy Scouts of America issued the following statement today:
Boy Scouts of America welcomes today’s decision from the Oregon Supreme Court declaring that the Portland Public School District did not discriminate against an atheist student by permitting Boy Scouts to make presentations and distribute informational flyers.
An atheist mother represented by the ACLU complained that allowing Boy Scouts to recruit in public schools on the same basis as other groups discriminated against her atheist son who attends Portland public schools. In today’s decision reversing a lower court decision, the Oregon Supreme Court emphatically concluded that “nothing that occurred in any public school program, service, or activity was discriminatory at all.”
“Giving Boy Scouts equal access is not discrimination,” said Scouting spokesperson Robert H. Bork, Jr., “it is the law.”
“The First Amendment and two federal statues require that Boy Scouts be given the same access to school facilities as other youth or community organizations,” said Boy Scouts’ attorney George A. Davidson. If the lower court’s decision had been upheld, “every school district in Oregon would have been in jeopardy of losing federal funding.”
Read our amicus brief to the Oregon Supreme Court
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