I think it has to do more with the objectives of the president-elect of the BSA, than some potential court case.

Personally, I think this proposed change (which may or may not happen) has to do with a lot of different things, and none of us can really know how much influence of each one is actually contributing to the result. These things include, in no particular order: Opinions expressed by various councils in favor of a change; opinions expressed by BSA members and CO's in favor of a change; loss and potential additional loss of corporate funding; loss and potential additional loss of United Way and other charitable funding; whatever polls and surveys (scientific or otherwise) have been taken; declining membership and potential additional declining membership; the fundamental right-ness of making a change (sorry, I had to throw that one in there, since it's reason #1 for me); lobbying by various outside groups (though personally I don't think that is much of a factor, except as it leads to the next one); bad publicity; and probably a few others. And of course, many of these have cause-and-effect relationships with each other, in various directions. For example, bad publicity can lead to a decline in donations even beyond the opposition to the policy itself. Note that I did not list the opinions of the president-elect of the BSA, because I think that if that is a factor at all, it would be maybe a half-percent of the entire picture. If the BSA was otherwise dead-set on keeping the policy (and they may still be), and the "heir" to the presidency was speaking out against it, I think that they would just find a new president. (Which of course = more bad publicity.)

As for litigation, I guess I could see that as a very minor factor as well. If they have heard of groups planning to sue, they might have decided to change the policy before the suits are even filed so that it didn't look like the lawsuits led to the change. But as I said, I think the other factors are much more important.

Of course, we still don't know whether the policy is actually changing.

Has no one noticed that the CO's have a paragraph in the CAgreement already that stipulates that the CO has the right (nay, the responsibility) to define the membership and leadership in the Scout units they sponsor? Hence we have Scout units that are all Catholic, all Jewish and all LDS. But then again, could the BSA declare that a Scout unit may NOT define their membership in such ways, in order to use the Scout program?

Which is why it was wrong for National to tell units they could NOT have homosexual members. It is equally wrong for them to tell them they all have to allow homosexuals to join.. I think someone said that National does say you can't discriminate on race. I am sure some do through loophole. If your CO discriminates on race, and you have a scout unit who only allow in members that are in thier main membership pool (say a private school.) then your scouting unit discriminates on race.

Most likely the BSA in the past did discriminate on race, then they went to local option, then went to a no discrimination rule.. But, this and the homosexual issue are the only times they have put any requirement on who a unit can or can not discriminate against.

Or maybe not. It may just be that in the health care case, he interprets the taxation clause of the constitution differently than the other justices. (At least, I think that was the issue. It was so convoluted and unrelated to any of my day-to-day practice of law, it's fading from my memory already.) I don't think it means he suddenly converted to liberalism.

(This was supposed to be a reply to Nike's comment about CJ Roberts. It doesn't seem to have ended up there.)

NJ, while I agree that what all you mentioned has helped bring us here, I do not believe that this would be put to a vote right now unless it was the stated agenda of a few, high ranking members of the executive board.

Chief Justice Roberts is the wild card. As Chief Justice he is concerned how history will view his court more than the current politics. I suspect that he does not want to go down in history as the Roger Taney of the 21st century.