Significance: This case established the right of religious, political, and philosophical groups to meet on school campuses that give similar access to other sorts of groups.
Background: The 1984 Equal Access Act allowed secondary school students to participate in various group activities on campuses before or after school hours. In 1985, school officials at Westside High School in Omaha, Nebraska, rejected the request of student Bridget Mergens to form a Christian group on campus. Mergens offered to set up the group without a school sponsor to avoid the issue of separation of church and state, but school regulations required that all student groups have a faculty sponsor. Mergens sued on the grounds that the refusal violated the Equal Access Act. The school argued that it could not permit Mergens’s club to meet on school grounds because to do so would violate the establishment clause of the First Amendment. The district court ruled in favor of the school board, but the Court of Appeals ruled in favor of Mergens. The school board appealed the case to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Decision: This case was argued on January 9, 1990, and decided on June 4, 1990, by a vote of 8 to 1. Justice Sandra Day O’Connor spoke for the Court, which ruled in favor of Mergens. Justice John Stevens dissented. The Court held that the school had already established a limited open forum—that is, the school allowed a variety of student groups whose purpose did not relate to the official curriculum to meet on school grounds. By denying a religious group the opportunity to meet on campus, the school refused equal access to the limited open forum and thus violated the Equal Access Act. In addition, the Court affirmed the constitutionality of the Equal Access Act.
Excerpt from the Opinion of the Court: “Although a school may not itself lead or direct a religious club, a school that permits a student-initiated and student-led religious club to meet after school, just as it permits any other student group to do, does not convey a message of state approval or endorsement of the particular religion. . . . To the extent that a religious club is merely one of many different student-initiated voluntary clubs, students should perceive no message of government endorsement of religion.”
