Widmar v. Vincent

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Widmar v. Vincent
Supreme Court of the United States
Argued October 6, 1981 Decided December 8, 1981
Full case name	Gary E. Widmar v. Clark Vincent
Citations	454 U.S. 263 (more) 102 S. Ct. 269; 70 L. Ed. 2d 440
Case history
Prior	Chess v. Widmar, 480 F. Supp. 907 (W.D. Mo. 1979); reversed, 635 F.2d 1310 (8th Cir. 1980); cert. granted, 450 U.S. 909 (1981).
Holding
When a public university opens its facilities to student meetings, it creates a public forum; given no other justification, the university may not exclude religious groups based on the content of its members’ speech. Because the University of Missouri denied this space to Cornerstone, an avowedly Christian organization, it violated both Cornerstone's 14th Amendment equal protection rights, as well as its guarantee of free speech rights found in the First Amendment.
Court membership
Chief Justice Warren E. Burger Associate Justices William J. Brennan Jr. · Byron White Thurgood Marshall · Harry Blackmun Lewis F. Powell Jr. · William Rehnquist John P. Stevens · Sandra Day O'Connor
Case opinions
Majority	Powell, joined by Burger, Brennan, Marshall, Blackmun, Rehnquist, O'Connor
Concurrence	Stevens
Dissent	White
Laws applied
U.S. Const. amends. I, XIV;

Widmar v. Vincent, 454 U.S. 263 (1981), held that when the U.S. government provides an "open forum," it may not discriminate against speech that takes place within that forum on the basis of the viewpoint it expresses—in this case, against religious speech engaged in by an evangelical Christian organization.^[1]