Roberts v. United States
Jaycees
Identification Supreme Court decision
Date Decided on July 3, 1984
The Supreme Court determined that the application of the
Minnesota Human Rights Act, which prohibited gender
discrimination in many public contexts, to the Junior
Chamber of Commerce did not violate the group’s right to
freedom of association.
During the 1970’s, the Minnesota Junior Chamber
of Commerce (Jaycees) began to admit women as
members, in violation of the national Jaycees’ by-
laws. When the national organization threatened to
revoke the charter of the state organization, the
Minnesota Jaycees complained to state authorities
that the national organization’s actions were in vio-
lation of the Minnesota Human Rights Act, which
prohibited gender discrimination in places of public
accommodation. When state authorities, including
the Minnesota Supreme Court, agreed with this
conclusion, the U.S. Jaycees appealed to the U.S. Su-
preme Court, arguing that the state’s actions in-
fringed on its freedom of association.
The Court, in an opinion written by Justice Wil-
liam J. Brennan, distinguished between two forms of
freedom of association—one centering on intimate
activities such as marriage and procreation, and the
other finding its roots in freedom of expression. The
Court concluded that the freedom of association
claimed by the Jaycees was expressive in nature. The
Court had previously recognized that freedom of ex-
pression included a freedom to associate with those
with whom one shared common expressive pur-
poses. This freedom, however, was not absolute. Ac-
cording to the Court’s opinion, it could be infringed
upon if the government had a sufficiently compel-
ling purpose for doing so, unrelated to the sup-
pression of speech, and could not accomplish this
purpose in a manner less restrictive of freedom of
association. The Court concluded that the state’s
interest in prohibiting gender discrimination was
sufficiently compelling to justify overriding the Jay-
cees’ freedom of association and that the state had
no means of accomplishing this end in a manner less
restrictive of the Jaycees’ freedom of association.
Justices William H. Rehnquist and Sandra Day
O’Connor concurred in this result. Chief Justice
Warren E. Burger and Justice Harry A. Blackmun
did not participate in the case. In a separate concur-
ring opinion, Justice O’Connor argued that the Jay-
cees were more a commercial form of association
than an expressive one and that their rights to free-
dom of association could be more readily regulated
than if their identity were less commercial in nature.Impact In the last quarter of the twentieth century,
the U.S. Supreme Court had several occasions to re-
solve conflicts between efforts to prevent certain
forms of discrimination against individuals and con-
stitutionally protected rights such as freedom of reli-
gion, speech, and association. The Court’s decisions
in this area generally shielded groups whose identi-
ties were closely associated with the exercise of these
freedoms from the effect of antidiscrimination laws.
It permitted, however, the enforcement of antidis-
crimination laws against groups that could be char-
acterized—as Justice O’Connor did in this case—as
more commercial in nature.The Eighties in America Roberts v. United States Jaycees 831
Associate Justice William J. Brennan delivered the opinion of
the Court inRoberts v. United States Jaycees.(Library of
Congress)