In a case that attracted amicus participation of noteworthy proportions, the California Supreme Court holds that a medical provider has no constitutional defense, based on freedom of religion and freedom of speech, to a claim for sexual orientation discrimination under California’s Unruh Act (Civ. Code, § 51). The doctor defendants had refused artificial insemination services to a lesbian and contended that they did so for religious reasons. The Supremes find no such exception under the federal or state constitutions. The court finds that because the Act is a facially neutral and valid law of general applicability, the incidental infringement on religious liberty that compliance requires cannot sustain a constitutional defense…
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Bikers’ Colors — First Amendment Claim Not Dead
The Ninth Circuit has just ordered en banc rehearing in the First Amendment case of the bikers ejected from the Garlic Festival in Gilroy on the ground that the club jackets they were wearing constituted “gang insignia” (Villegas v. City of Gilroy, case no. 05-15725 (9th Cir., Sept. 14, 2007)). I missed covering the original case; it was published on the day I launched this blog and some other cases caught my eye that day instead. Decision of the Day was there. He says that the original panel “blithely affirmed” the dismissal of the bikers’ First Amendment claims because four of them gave four different answers as to what they…
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Jurisdiction over Church Property Issues
When does a Southern Baptist church cease to be a Southern Baptist church? I know that sounds like a set-up, but there’s no punchline here. It’s a serious question, and it was at the heart of a dispute decided by the a Monterey County Superior Court. In Central Coast Baptist Assn. v. First Baptist Church of Los Lomas, case no. H029958 (6th Dist. August 23, 2007), a reversionary clause in First Baptist’s constitution provided that its assets would pass to Central Coast, a voluntary association of Baptist churches, in the event of a “dissolution or winding up” of First Baptist or if it should “cease to be a Southern Baptist…
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Legal Blogosphere Reacts as Ninth Circuit Puts the Brakes on CDA Immunity for Online Services
Yesterday’s Ninth Circuit decision in Fair Housing Council v. Roommates.com, LLC, case no. 04-56916 (May 15, 2007) has the digital legal world abuzz . . . as one should expect of the latest decision on the scope of immunity afforded to online services by the Communications Decency Act (“CDA”), 47 U.S.C. § 230(c). In this case, two municipal fair housing councils sued Roommates.com, an online clearinghouse for those seeking to obtain roommates or move in as one. They alleged that the website published discriminatory roommate preferences in violation of the Fair Housing Act and various state laws. The district court found Roommates immune under the CDA and granted summary judgment…
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California Joins Jurisdictions Holding that Injunction Against Speech Already Proven at Trial to be Defamatory is Constitutional
In a rather comprehensive analysis of the constitutional doctrine of prior restraint, the California Supreme Court holds in Balboa Island Village Inn, Inc. v. Lemen, case no. S127904 (April 26, 2007), that speech already proven at trial to be defamatory may be enjoined without running afoul of the First Amendment. Reaching back more than half a millennium to Blackstone’s commentaries as well as evaluating present-day commentaries and U. S. Supreme Court cases, the Balboa Island majority offers a primer on its view of the prior restraint doctrine. The majority draws the line between speech already adjudicated to be unprotected by the First Amendment and that which has not: “In determining…
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California Anti-SLAPP Statute Does Not Protect Acts in Furtherance of Free Exercise of Religion
When defendants were sued by their neighbors for nuisance arising from smoke and ash entering the neighbors’ properties from fires defendants regularly lit as part of religious rituals in their backyard, they filed a motion to dismiss under the anti-SLAPP statute (Code of Civil Procedure section 425.16). The Court of Appeal affirmed the trial court’s denial of the motion, rejecting the defendant’s contention that section 425.16 was intended to protect acts associated with the free exercise of religion. Section 425.16 “did not import wholesale the protections of the First Amendment.” The statute mentions only two of the rights enumerated in the First Amendment — freedom of speech and the right…