CHRISTIAN LEGAL SOCIETY
The Christian Legal Society (CLS), founded in
1961, is a nonprofit organization of lawyers,
judges, law professors, and law students. The
group’s missions are to promote high ethical
standards within the legal profession, to support
its members’ commitment to Christian professional
lives, and to advance religious freedom for
all U.S. citizens regardless of affiliation. CLS
provides resources for research into law and theology;
maintains a data bank of commentaries
on legal issues; and provides a speakers’ bureau,
a lawyer-referral service, and mediation and
ARBITRATION services. It also publishes Christian
Legal Society—Briefly, a quarterly newsletter
for its members, and Christian Legal Society—
Quarterly, a magazine that covers issues that are
in line with the society’s goals. CLS’s legal-advocacy
arm, the Center for Law and Religious Freedom,
promotes freedom of religion and
challenges government interference with the free
exercise of religion.
In 1993, CLS backed passage of the Religious
Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA), 42 U.S.C.A.
§§ 2000bb, et seq., a response to the 1990 U.S.
Supreme Court decision in Employment Division,
Department of Human Resources v. Smith,
494 U.S. 872, 110 S. Ct. 1595, 108 L. Ed. 2d 876.
Smith upheld a denial of unemployment benefits
to Native Americans who had been fired
from their jobs for using peyote, a hallucinogenic
drug, as part of a religious ceremony. CLS
and numerous other groups representing a wide
range of religious and political persuasions lobbied
for RFRA, which requires the government
to show a “compelling state interest,” such as
public health or safety, before interfering with
religious practices.
CLS members successfully argued two
important religious-freedom cases before the
U.S. Supreme Court in 1993. In Zobrest v.
Catalina Foothills School District, 509 U.S. 1, 113
S. Ct. 2462, 125 L. Ed. 2d 1, the Court held that
the Establishment Clause did not prohibit a
public school district from paying for a sign language
interpreter for a deaf student who
attended a Catholic high school. In Lamb’s
Chapel v. Center Moriches Union Free School District,
508 U.S. 384, 113 S. Ct. 2141, 124 L. Ed. 2d
352, the Court held that a school district’s denial
of a religious organization’s application to use
school facilities to show a film on Christian values
in family relationships violated the church’s
FIRST AMENDMENT right to FREEDOM OF
SPEECH.
In Rosenberger v. Rector and Visitors of the
University of Virginia, 515 U.S. 819, 115 S. Ct.
2510, 132 L. Ed. 2d 700 (1995), CLS supported
the plaintiff, who sued the University of Virginia for denying his request for financial support for
publication of a Christian magazine. Although
the university subsidized a wide range of publications
from its Student Activities Fund (SAF), it
denied Ronald W. Rosenberger’s request on the
grounds that his magazine violated SAF guidelines.
Rosenberger argued that the guidelines,
which prohibited the university from subsidizing
a publication that “primarily promotes or
manifests a particular belie[f] in or about a deity
or an ultimate reality,” violated his free speech
rights. A brief filed by CLS maintained that the
guidelines discriminated on the basis of religious
belief and that a decision against the
plaintiff would be a step toward “a relentlessly
secular society” that is intolerant of religious
persons and their views. The U.S. Supreme
Court decided in favor of the plaintiff but rested
its holding on free speech grounds, stating that
the SAF guidelines discriminated on the basis of
viewpoint and violated the plaintiff ’s First
Amendment rights.
The position taken by CLS in its amicus brief
filed in the U.S. Supreme Court case of BOY
SCOUTS OF AMERICA V. DALE, 530 U.S. 640, 120
S. Ct. 2446, 147 L. Ed. 2d 554 (2000) also raised
arguments considered by the high court in its
final ruling. The Court held that New Jersey’s
public-accommodations law violated the Boy
Scouts’ First Amendment right of association
when the law required the Boy Scouts of America
to admit James Dale, an avowed homosexual
and gay-rights activist, as a member of its organization.
The Boy Scouts, a private, not-for-profit
organization, had asserted that homosexual
conduct was inconsistent with the values it
sought to instill in its members.
In the early part of the decade, CLS filed
amicus briefs in numerous cases involving religious,
ethical, or moral issues, including Newdow
v. U.S. Congress, 292 F.2d 597 (9th Cir.
2002), judgement stayed (opposing a challenge
to the “under God” phrase in the Pledge of Allegiance)
and Oregon v. Aschcroft, 192 F. Supp. 2d
1077 (D. Or. 2002) (supporting Attorney General
Ashcroft’s directive to revoke federal controlled-
substances licenses from physicians who
prescribed narcotics for suicides). In 2002, CLS
also published a scholarly position paper
opposing human cloning for any purpose. It
argued that the scientific distinction between
human reproductive cloning and therapeutic
(stem cell) cloning was specious and not supported
by scientific data, in that both forms of
cloning required the killing of a living human
embryo.
CLS members are committed to the biblical
injunction to “not leave justice and the love of
God undone” (Luke 11:42, Matt. 23:23). They
are dedicated to ending injustice, limiting or
eliminating legal ABORTION, outlawing PORNOGRAPHY,
and bringing religious thought and
precepts into public education. They also are
committed to the evangelization of the legal
profession, and plan to increase the society’s
membership by ten to 12 percent each year.
FURTHER READINGS
Christian Legal Society Website. Available online at
Christian Legal Society Quarterly. Published beginning in
1981.
