My post below about the panel debate in San Diego brought this response from Eric Isaacson, one of the panel members and presumably an attorney representing the ACLU in the legal wrangling that is the subject of the panel. For some reason I cannot get Mr. Isaacson's comment to open in the comments section below the post, but I did receive the comment separately by e-mail, so I am posting it here for review.

Mr. Isaacson does not mention in his comment that he was one of the panelists in the May 18 discussion of the San Diego controversy. Here's the entire panel:

* Professor Alan Brownstein, University of California Davis School of Law
* George Davidson, Hughes Hubbard & Reed LLP
* Professor John Eastman, Chapman University School of Law
* Eric Isaacson, Lerach Coughlin Stoia Geller Rudman & Robbins
* Dean Kenneth Starr,Pepperdine University School of Law
* Dean Daniel Rodriguez, University of San Diego Law School (moderator)

(I am not suggesting that Mr. Isaacson intended to avoid mentioning his involvement on the panel. His post below seems very well-informed, and a Google search showed him to be a panelist on this page. For some reason the earlier link I had was to a page about the panel that did not show his name.)

The web site of Mr. Isaacson's law firm states here that he is experienced in pro bono (public interest) litigation. His firm's biographical summary for him is here.

Enough background. I am delighted that Mr. Isaacson took the time to respond. These are issues that need debate and full exposure. I hope to be posting more about this, but I want my posts to be as informative as possible.

In that spirit, here is Mr. Isaacson's comment:

The BSA operates its headquarters for a region covering nearly 9,000 miles of Southern California from the City of San Diego's Balboa Park - - paying one
dollar a year rent for facilities where it employs twenty or thirty people to do the BSA's organizational business. Membership forms downloaded from these regional headquarters - - operated from offices owned by the City - - carry a Declaration of Religious Principle announcing that anyone who does not share the BSA leadership's theology about "duty to God" is incapable of becoming "the best kind of citizen." That theology led the BSA to ban a major denomination from its Religious Relations Committee in 1992, and to throw the denomination out of the BSA's Religious Awards program in 1998, because the denomination preached against discrimination, shunning, and exclusion. From Balboa Park, the BSA issues orders enforcing rules that those who do not share the its theology shall be shunned — along with homosexuals who are ostracized on the basis that they are "not clean." The City of San Diego has, moreover, posted signs around the BSA's regional headquarters announcing that the City stands behind these policies, explaining that all this is a "joint operation" of the BSA and local government: "This property is owned by the City of San Diego and is being utilized for the benefit of general public through the joint operation of the
city and the Boy Scouts of America." Now, it's true that the Boy Scouts are entitled to discriminate on the basis of religion, if they wish, and to ostracize others as spiritually "unclean" and as social inferiors - - or, "not the best kind of citizen," as BSA puts it. But the City of San Diego, as a governmental body cannot sponsor or endorse such activity, which it clearly has done in San Diego, thereby violating both the state and federal constitutions.