CompuServe Messages

Kevin, Thanx for jarring my memory! You may have given me a rebuttal to both your point and Tom's (see other reply). There IS precedent for 'private' organizations having to follow pay attention to? constitutional issues. Consider private clubs (like the Johnathon Club here in LA) which for years excluded women, Jews, blacks and/or other minorities as a matter of policy. Various court decisions have required those private organizations to change their policies. I don't recall exactly the basis of these decisions — but my wife tells me she thinks it had something to do with those groups (pardon me, organizations) letting their facilities be used by the public. I'm a little hazy on this. I'll look into it. Another example would be the hiring practices of private companies. I think the logic there was based on their operating in public environments or some such. Yet another example, probably less applicable, would be the prohibitions on private universities from discriminating on the basis of race and sex (i.e., not only in admissions but also in their funding of male versus female athletics, prohibiting females from joining 'male' sports teams, etc.). There the rulings were derived, I think, from the schools getting federal funding — although maybe the rulings were broader. I'll look into that, too. Does CIS get any federal funding? In any event, there may be precedents for applying constitutional tests to actions taken in a 'private' environment like CIS's network. – Mark