Calif. Mulls Barring Judges From Boy Scouts Leadership

A California panel on judicial ethics has recommended that state judges be barred from affiliating with the Boy Scouts of America because of the youth group’s prohibition on gay and lesbian troop leaders, the San Francisco Chronicle writes.

California’s code of judicial ethics already blocks judges from participating in organizations that discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation, but alone among the 22 states with such provisions it exempts “nonprofit youth organizations,” a rule put in place in 1996 to allow jurists to maintain Boy Scouts ties.

The state Supreme Court’s eight-member ethics advisory committee, which includes six judges, voted unanimously for the ban and asked the court to repeal the Boy Scouts exemption on August 1. The Scouts prohibition of gay youth officially ended January 1 but the organization maintained its ban on homosexual adults.