January 26, 2000
Supreme Court to tackle
cases on abortion, homosexuality
___WASHINGTON--The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to render decisions this term on two of the most controversial social issues of the day: abortion and homosexual rights.
___The high court announced Jan. 14 it would review lower-court rulings on a state's ban on so-called "partial-birth" abortion and the Boy Scouts' prohibition against homosexual troop leaders. Oral arguments in both cases have not been scheduled but reportedly will be in April. Opinions could be released before the term's summer recess.
___The 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said the 1997 Nebraska abortion law is unconstitutional because it places an "undue burden" on women's right to choose an abortion.
___The appeals court said while the term "partial-birth abortion" has been widely used by lawmakers and the media, it had no fixed legal or medical definition.
___In addition to barring a controversial late-term procedure known as dilation-and-extraction, in which the fetus is killed by extracting the contents of the skull, the Nebraska law also bans a more widely used procedure known as dilation-and-evacuation.
___By prohibiting the most common procedure for second-trimester abortions, the appeals court concluded, the Nebraska law "imposes an undue burden on a woman's right to choose to have an abortion."
___In asking the high court to review the decision, Nebraska Attorney General Don Stenberg argued that the 8th Circuit's ruling conflicts with a ruling by the 7th Circuit upholding similar laws in Wisconsin and Illinois. He also argued that the appeals court misapplied past Supreme Court rulings on how states may regulate abortion.
___"If a state cannot ban the partial-birth abortion/D&X procedure, there is effectively no limit on abortion at all," Stenberg argued in Nebraska's petition to the high court.
___Stenberg also invited the high court to address broader issues surrounding abortion, including whether courts should leave the matter to lawmakers. But justices limited their review of the case to whether the appeals court misconstrued Nebraska's ban and misapplied Supreme Court guidelines on what constitutes an undue burden.
___Congress has twice approved legislation to ban partial-birth abortions, but President Clinton vetoed the measures.
___Thirty states have passed bans on partial-birth abortion. Officials from 10 states--Alabama, Iowa, Louisiana, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Virginia, South Carolina, South Dakota and West Virginia--urged the high court to review the 8th Circuit ruling.
___In the other case, the court will review a unanimous decision by the New Jersey Supreme Court that a man's membership in the Boy Scouts of America was unlawfully revoked solely because he is a homosexual.
___James Dale joined the Boy Scouts at age 8, beginning a successful Scout tenure that included earning scouting's top award, the Eagle Scout badge. He later gained adult membership to the Boy Scouts and served as an assistant scoutmaster for 16 months.
___But after Dale was identified in a news article as co-president of the Rutgers University Lesbian/Gay Alliance, he received a letter from a local Boy Scouts official revoking his membership. The official said the standards for leadership by the group forbade membership to homosexuals.
___A trial court rejected Dale's charge the Boy Scouts had violated a New Jersey law barring discrimination in places of public accommodation and in other areas. But a state appeals court reversed the decision.
___The New Jersey Supreme Court also sided with Dale, ruling that Boy Scouts is a "place of public accommodation" and not a "distinctly private" club. The top state court said the group invites the public to join, attend or participate in some way and benefits from relationships with the government.
___The court also discarded the Boy Scouts' claim that it is exempt from the anti-discrimination law because it is operated by a "bona fide religious or sectarian institution."
___Lawyers for the Boy Scouts asked the Supreme Court to review the case. They argued the New Jersey court's decision unconstitutionally requires the organization "to put into a leadership position a person who, by word and deed, disagrees with the organization's moral code." Lawyers said the ruling violates the Boy Scouts' freedom of speech, rights of expressive association and freedom of intimate association.
___The Southern Baptist Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission weighed in on the case in a brief written by Jay Sekulow, director of Pat Robertson's American Center for Law and Justice.
___"While Dale certainly has the right to be a homosexual advocate, the Boy Scouts has an equivalent right not to hold Dale out as an example for male youth," said the brief for the Southern Baptist agency and the ACLJ.
___
___Compiled from Associated Baptist Press and Baptist Press reports
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