High Court Backs Equal Treatment, Free Speech

Forget the usual labels: Liberal or conservative. Pro-government or anti-government. Activist or restrained.

The major rulings of the Supreme Court’s 1995-96 term, which ended Monday, can be explained by the justices’ allegiance to two constitutional principles: strict equal treatment under law and freedom of speech, broadly defined.

Those two principles bring together the justices from across the spectrum, even if they yield rulings that confound the usual analysis.

Consider the three leading civil rights rulings of the term. The justices struck down an anti-gay state amendment in Colorado, opened the doors of the Virginia Military Institute to women and threw out the majority-black congressional districts in Texas and North Carolina.

The first two decisions were cheered by liberals, the third by conservatives, but each resulted from a strict application of the 14th Amendment, which says that no state shall “deny to any person the equal protection of the laws.”

Colorado’s voters in 1992 passed a state initiative known as Amendment 2 that barred gays and lesbians from winning legal protections against discrimination based on their sexual orientation.

The equal-protection clause demands “the law’s neutrality when the rights of persons are at stake. . . . Amendment 2 classifies homosexuals to make them unequal to everyone else,” wrote Justice Anthony M. Kennedy for a 6-3 majority.

VMI had enrolled only young men for its 157 years and officials of the academy argued that its harsh, physically demanding style of education was unsuited to young women.

By a 7-1 vote, the justices brushed aside the generalizations about the sexes and ruled that the equal-protection clause simply does not permit the “categorical exclusion” of women from a state-funded school.

But the equal-treatment principle does not always work in favor of traditional victims of discrimination, such as racial minorities or women.

In a blow to affirmative action, the court voted, 5 to 4, to rule that “racial preferences” in public contracting are unconstitutional, except to remedy proven discrimination.

The same 5-4 majority also struck down three “majority-minority” districts in Texas and one in North Carolina. The equal protection clause does not allow state officials to use race as a “predominant factor” in drawing electoral lines, the court said.

On Monday, the court let stand a federal appeals court ruling that struck down an affirmative action policy at the University of Texas law school. While not a final ruling, all nine justices agreed that the equal-protection clause does not allow a two-track admissions policy that sets different standards for white and black applicants.

This term was also a good one for the free-speech principle.

In May, the justices struck down laws in Rhode Island and nine other states that prohibited the advertising of beer and liquor prices.

Last week, it struck down part of the post-Watergate federal campaign spending law that limited how much money political parties can spend to promote their views.

At week’s end, the justices extended free-speech protections to independent contractors, saying that government officials may not punish them for criticizing officials in public or supporting their political opponents.

They also struck down most of a 1992 law that restricted sexually explicit programming on special cable television channels.