Cite as: 533 U. S. 98 (2001)
Stevens, J., dissenting
by the speaker, it has broad discretion to "preserve the property under its control for the use to which it is lawfully dedicated." Greer v. Spock, 424 U. S. 828, 836 (1976); see also Board of Ed. of Westside Community Schools (Dist. 66) v. Mergens, 496 U. S. 226, 275, n. 6 (1990) (Stevens, J., dissenting) ("A school's extracurricular activities constitute a part of the school's teaching mission, and the school accordingly must make 'decisions concerning the content of those activities' " (quoting Widmar, 454 U. S., at 278 (Stevens, J., concurring in judgment)). Accordingly, "control over access to a nonpublic forum can be based on subject matter and speaker identity so long as the distinctions drawn are reasonable in light of the purpose served by the forum and are viewpoint neutral." Cornelius v. NAACP Legal Defense & Ed. Fund, Inc., 473 U. S. 788, 806 (1985). The novel question that this case presents concerns the constitutionality of a public school's attempt to limit the scope of a public forum it has created. More specifically, the question is whether a school can, consistently with the First Amendment, create a limited public forum that admits the first type of religious speech without allowing the other two.
Distinguishing speech from a religious viewpoint, on the one hand, from religious proselytizing, on the other, is comparable to distinguishing meetings to discuss political issues from meetings whose principal purpose is to recruit new members to join a political organization. If a school decides to authorize afterschool discussions of current events in its classrooms, it may not exclude people from expressing their views simply because it dislikes their particular political opinions. But must it therefore allow organized political groups—for example, the Democratic Party, the Libertarian Party, or the Ku Klux Klan—to hold meetings, the principal purpose of which is not to discuss the current-events topic from their own unique point of view but rather to recruit others to join their respective groups? I think not. Such recruiting meetings may introduce divisiveness and
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