Good News Club v. Milford Central School, 533 U.S. 98, 37 (2001)

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136

GOOD NEWS CLUB v. MILFORD CENTRAL SCHOOL

Souter, J., dissenting

religious purposes." Id., at D2. As the District Court stated, Good News did "not object to the reasonableness of [Milford]'s policy that prohibits the use of [its] facilities for religious purposes." Id., at C14.

The sole question before the District Court was, therefore, whether, in refusing to allow Good News's intended use, Milford was misapplying its unchallenged restriction in a way that amounted to imposing a viewpoint-based restriction on what could be said or done by a group entitled to use the forum for an educational, civic, or other permitted purpose. The question was whether Good News was being disqualified when it merely sought to use the school property the same way that the Milford Boy and Girl Scouts and the 4-H Club did. The District Court held on the basis of undisputed facts that Good News's activity was essentially unlike the presentation of views on secular issues from a religious standpoint held to be protected in Lamb's Chapel, see App. to Pet. for Cert. C29-C31, and was instead activity precluded by Milford's unchallenged policy against religious use, even under the narrowest definition of that term.

The Court of Appeals understood the issue the same way. See 202 F. 3d 502, 508 (CA2 2000) (Good News argues that "to exclude the Club because it teaches morals and values from a Christian perspective constitutes unconstitutional viewpoint discrimination"); id., at 509 ("The crux of the Good News Club's argument is that the Milford school's application of the Community Use Policy to exclude the Club from its facilities is not viewpoint neutral").1 The Court of Appeals

1 The Court of Appeals held that any challenge to the policy's reasonableness was foreclosed by its own precedent, 202 F. 3d, at 509, a holding the majority leaves untouched, see ante, at 107 ("[W]e need not decide whether it is unreasonable in light of the purposes served by the forum"); cf. ante, at 108, n. 2 ("Because we hold that the exclusion of the Club on the basis of its religious perspective constitutes unconstitutional viewpoint discrimination, it is no defense for Milford that purely religious purposes can be excluded under state law"). In any event, the reasonableness of the forum limitation was beyond the scope of the appeal from summary

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