Recent Developments in Public Education Law: Postsecondary Education

[...] a conservative student group challenged the State University of New York Student Association's use of advisory referenda to assist it in making funding allocation decisions for registered student organizations.3 The Second Circuit Court of Appeals first held that the student activity fees were a limited public forum requiring viewpoint neutrality in their distribution.4 The court then rejected the use of the advisory referenda, holding that voting on the propriety of funding for student organizations was inherently laden with viewpoint-based judgments and that the defendant's attempts to mitigate the influence of the referenda by applying objective standards to its funding decisions did not preserve the necessary protections of the First Amendment.5 In Beta Upsilon Chi v. Machen,6 the defendant university declined to recognize a Christian fraternity as a Registered Student Organization on its campus because the fraternity refused to accept non-Christian members.