520). Viewpoint neutrality ensures that funding is equally allocated to all registered student groups, and that registered student groups use their allocated funds in neutral ways.
For instance, public funds collected by students can be used to support campus facilities and meeting halls but not donations to political action groups. Student funds must be designated in ways that maintain institutional neutrality: meaning that student-funded groups cannot use student monies to support a political candidate. Moreover, student organizations "with a primary political mission" are not viewpoint neutral and are thus not entitled to student money (Kaplan & Lee p. 520). Universities are also not permitted to allow funding allocation decisions to be made by student referendum: "because there were no safeguards in the referendum process for treating minority views with the same respect as majority views, a fundamental principle of viewpoint neutrality," (Kaplan & Lee p. 521). Public universities are permitted to instate an opt-out policy for the collection of student funds, but are not obliged to do so. Courts have determined that obliging a university to permit opting out would be seriously disruptive to achieving First Amendment objectives.
Student organizations are prohibited from discriminatory practices, and universities are not obliged to recognize or...
In rare cases, student organizations are permitted to use affirmative action policies if such policies can be shown to serve the ultimate function of increasing minority student participation. Similarly, religious student organizations are permitted to restrict membership to those who profess belief, protected by the First Amendment freedom of expression clause that guarantees religious organizations the right to exist and practice their religion freely (Kaplan & Lee p. 528). However, religious student organizations may not discriminate against persons on the basis of race, gender, or sexual orientation simply by claiming a right to do so under the freedom of religion or the freedom of speech clauses (Kaplan & Lee p. 528).
Religious organizations sometimes claim protection under the freedom of speech clause rather than the freedom of religious expression clause, however. In Widmar v. Vincent (1981), a religious student organization vied for the use of public campus facilities for the purpose of prayer: which was framed as freedom of speech more so than freedom of religious expression. The Court also ruled that equal access to the school's public facilities trumped the need for strict separation of church and state (Kaplan & Lee p. 530). Simply using campus facilities was not deemed to be…
