Decisions

>Few homosexuals have pressed the cause of gay civil rights with as much legal energy as Jack Baker and James McConnell, both 29. Recently they won a round when a Minneapolis court ruled that McConnell could adopt Baker (TIME, Sept. 6). Two other legal battles, however, have just ended in failure for the couple. First, the Minnesota Supreme Court ruled that they were not entitled to a marriage license, despite their claim that "restricting marriage to only couples of the opposite sex is irrational and invidiously discriminatory." On the contrary, said the court, "the institution of marriage as a union of man and woman is as old as the book of Genesis." Last week, in yet another case, the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against McConnell's suit over employment rights. He had sued because a job offer at the University of Minnesota library had been withdrawn when it was learned that he was seeking to marry Baker, now a third-year law student and president of the university's student body. The circuit court concluded that McConnell had insisted on "the right to pursue an activist role in implementing his unconventional ideas," and ruled that "we know of no constitutional fiat or binding principle of decisional law which requires an employer to accede to such extravagant demands."

>Long hair has increasingly been caught up in the machinery of justice, and the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals, for one, has had enough of it. Faced with three cases that opposed hair-length regulations for public school boys in Colorado, New Mexico and Utah, the court said: "We are convinced that the United States Constitution and statutes do not impose on the federal courts the duty and responsibility of supervising the length of a student's hair." Neither free-speech rights nor any other of the variety of claims asserted impressed the court. Rather, the judges felt that "the hodgepodge reference to many provisions of the Bill of Rights and the 14th Amendment shows uncertainty as to the existence of any federally protected right."

>Owners of beach and lakeside houses discovered years ago that large groups of single young people are willing to pay higher rent for the summer than families will normally ante up. The problem, observed the New Jersey Supreme Court, is that "unquestionably, and regrettably, excessive noise at all hours, wild parties, intoxication, acts of immorality, lewd and lascivious conduct, and traffic and parking congestion often accompany these group rentals." The court was considering two local zoning laws that bar such group arrangements in the oceanside towns of Manasquan and Belmar. Though the court sympathized with the towns' desire for quiet, it unanimously found the laws unconstitutionally broad. Under the zoning regulations, said Justice Frederick W. Hall, "two unrelated families of spouses and children cannot share an adequate house, nor could a small, unrelated group of widows, widowers, older spinsters, bachelors--or even judges." Hall suggested that the towns instead set numerical limits on occupancy according to the size of the house.

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