Paige Proposes Regulations to Enforce Boy Scouts of America Act

The U.S. Department of Education is seeking public comment on proposed regulations that guarantee equal access to public school facilities for the Boy Scouts of America and other patriotic youth groups, Secretary of Education Rod Paige announced today. On behalf of Secretary Paige, Assistant Secretary of Education Ray Simon and the Office for Civil Rights' Ken Marcus joined Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee for an event to discuss the proposed regulations at Ellen Smith Elementary School in Conway, Ark.

"The goal of these regulations is to ensure that the Boy Scouts and other patriotic youth groups have equal access to public facilities, and today's action is another step toward achieving this goal," Secretary Paige said.

The proposed regulations enforce the Boy Scouts of America Equal Access Act, which requires public schools that receive federal education funds to provide the Boy Scouts and other designated patriotic youth organizations under federal law (including, among others, Big Brothers Big Sisters, Boys and Girls Clubs of America, Girl Scouts of the U.S.A. and Little League Baseball, Inc.) with equal access to school facilities as compared to outside community and youth groups. The law also requires that these patriotic youth groups be given equal access to school activities and school-related communication tools (e.g., bulletin boards) as compared to other outside community and youth groups. Congress passed the Boy Scouts Act as part of the bipartisan No Child Left Behind education reforms and charged the Department's Office for Civil Rights with enforcing the law.

The proposed regulations will appear in an upcoming edition of the Federal Register and there is a 45-day public comment period from the date of publication. The Secretary expects to publish the final regulations after reviewing comments from the public.

The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that the Boy Scouts have the right to set their own standards for leadership. Schools must respect that right and not exclude the Boy Scouts because of its membership and leadership policies and oath of allegiance to God and country.

The Department invites public comment. Comments can be sent to Kenneth L. Marcus, Office for Civil Rights, U.S. Department of Education, 400 Maryland Ave., S.W., Room 6095 Potomac Center Plaza, Washington, D.C., 20202-1100. Comments also can be emailed to boyscoutscomments@ed.gov or www.regulations.gov.

All public comments will be available for inspection both during and after the public comment period. Persons wishing to view the comments may do so at the Department of Education--Potomac Center Plaza, 550 12th St. S.W., Room 6128, Washington, D.C., between 9:30 a.m. and 4:00 p.m. each business day except federal holidays.

What this does is put teeth into the Equal Access Act. Before, if someone denied a local BSA unit it's rights under the Equal Access Act, the unit's Council had to bring suit. This required them to committ resources that people gave them voluntarily, fighting a school board using their powers of taxation to take money for this purpose. In your larger urban areas, guess who's got more money? So the BSA would be laying money out right and left. While they'd win, they'd lose the money. This act put the burden on the local school boards. Now, breaking Federal law would cost them a lot more money than just their lawyers' fees (much of which was already in the budget since they have lawyers on staff). This keeps the school boards from draining funds from the BSA and defeating their ends by attrition.

Now, Lambda is not happy with this, as you can read here:

But the special attention given to the Boy Scouts comes at the expense of groups such as gay-straight alliances that are being completely ignored.

Nonsense. The fact that some people lobbied the Congress to support access to public schools for the BSA and other organizations with discriminatory membership policies has absolutely no effect on the ability of LGBTQ groups to lobby the Congress to support access to public schools. This is false logic and demagoguery.

"The Bush administration wants to add thousands of words in favor of the Boy Scouts to federal rules

If my guess is correct, that would be because this is required by federal law

that don't say one word about gay student groups

and why should they? Such groups, if they are denied access to public schools, are not being denied access based on discriminatory membership policies. Since that was the point of the act's amendment, doing so would not be germane to the act and thus to the point for which these new rules are being established.

–- even though they're both protected by federal law and gay-straight alliances are unlawfully denied school access on a regular basis," said Kevin Cathcart, Executive Director of Lambda Legal.

I wouldn't doubt that there are people who object to LGBTQ groups meeting in their public schools. And it does seem to me, and the courts, that this would be a violation of the Equal Access law. But that has nothing to do with the amendment passed for the benefit of Title 36 organizations (the 80 organizations with Federal Charters, such as the BSA, the GSUSA, the Red Cross, the VFW, etc.).

"The Boy Scouts need no help getting access to schools but they're the focus of the federal government's attention,

If they didn't need help, what was the point of the NCLB amendment? In fact, they did need help. A number of school districts across the country were denying the BSA access to the use of public school property to meet (allowing them to recruit during class time is a different issue, but the BSA is granted no relief on that in the NCLB act). The BSA was suing and winning against them, but this was quickly looking like "death by a thousand cuts"; each lawsuit took time and money away from the BSA and into the pockets of they lawyers of both sides, money that would be better put to use serving youth. For this man to say that the BSA needed no help in gaining access to public schools means that either he's flat out lying to try to build support for his position, or he's ignorant of what's really going on.

while gay youth are routinely ignored and left to fend for themselves when their rights aren't respected."

Is this a widespread phenomena that would be "death of a thousand cuts" to Lambda? If so, then let Lambda circle up their supporters and get the Congress to pass a law like the one that the BSA's (and other groups') supporters got passed. However, this one is not germane to LGBTQ groups. And that rhetoric about support for the BSA coming at the expense of support for LGBTQ is just flat deception.

In my kids' HS, the LGBTQ group just got dropped. But that was due to lack of interest; all groups at the school have to have a minimum membership or get dropped (IIRC, there's a one-year grace period, so one bad year doesn't kill you), and they didn't meet it. Four or 5 other groups got dropped at the same time, none of whom had any political/social agenda (we're talking stuff like model railroading).

Were organizations like the BSA given special consideration by this legislation? Sure. But if Lambda is having the same problem that the BSA did (and despite this man's assertion, they did have just such a problem), then they have the same options that the BSA did; either get a rider passed on an education bill, or get your organization recognized as a Title 36 Organization.

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