All-Comers at Rockford State and the Courthouse Permit
Rockford State University requires every registered student organization to sign an all-comers agreement: any enrolled student may join and seek leadership, and no one may be excluded on the basis of beliefs or status. A student chapter of a small religious fellowship refuses, saying its leaders must share its statement of faith; the university deregisters it, cutting off $2,400 in annual funding and access to campus rooms. That same semester, the city requires anyone demonstrating within 150 feet of the county courthouse to obtain a permit 10 days ahead and pay $400; the police chief may deny permits for "public safety reasons" with no stated standard or appeal. A group protesting a pending trial applies 8 days ahead, is denied, and demonstrates anyway.
1. Assess the university's all-comers policy as applied to the religious fellowship. What facts would most change your answer?
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This is a clash between the group's right of expressive association (and free exercise) and the university's authority to define the terms on which it subsidizes a limited public forum.
- The university has opened a forum and attached a subsidy and facility access to it, so it may impose reasonable, viewpoint-neutral conditions. An all-comers rule is facially neutral and generally applicable; it does not single out religion and does not prohibit the group from existing, meeting, or speaking - it only withholds registration benefits.
- The burden on the fellowship is real but indirect: it can still gather, it just cannot claim the subsidy while restricting leadership. Courts generally uphold neutral conditions of this kind unless they are applied to suppress a viewpoint.
- Facts that would flip the analysis: evidence of selective enforcement (a political or identity group permitted to exclude while the religious group is punished); an express exemption written for other groups; official statements targeting the fellowship's beliefs; or a state statute barring religious discrimination in public accommodations without a religious exemption.
- Note the narrowness of the remedy sought: deregistration is not a ban, which weakens the claim of a severe burden.
2. Which provisions of the permit ordinance are most vulnerable, and how should a court remedy them?
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Each element fails or survives on its own terms.
- Discretionary denial is the clearest defect. A permit scheme must contain narrow, objective, definite standards and provide prompt judicial review; a chief who may deny for "public safety reasons" with no standard and no appeal is the textbook invalid prior restraint. This is the provision a court is most likely to strike.
- The 10-day advance requirement is probably valid: short, fixed notice periods are routinely upheld as time, place, and manner rules. The absence of any expedited or spontaneous-event procedure is a weakness but not fatal by itself.
- The $400 fee is vulnerable. Fees must be calibrated to the administrative cost of processing and may not chill speech; a flat charge with no waiver for small or indigent groups can operate as a tax on assembly.
- The 150-foot buffer is likely upheld if it is narrowly tailored to a significant interest (courthouse access, juror impartiality) and leaves ample alternative channels nearby.
Remedy: sever the discretionary standard and the fee, leaving the notice and buffer provisions intact. The group's violation does not forfeit a facial challenge to the standardless denial.