The very purpose of a Bill of Rights was to withdraw certain subjects from the vicissitudes of political controversy, to place them beyond the reach of majorities and officials and to establish them as legal principles to be applied by the courts. One's right to life, liberty, and property, to free speech, a free press, freedom of worship and assembly and other fundamental rights may not be submitted to vote; they depend on the outcome of no elections.
If the petitioner's rank-and-file members are constitutionally entitled to (assert a given right) ... it is manifest that this right is properly assertable by the Association.... Petitioner is the appropriate party to assert these rights, because it and its members are in every practical sense identical. The Association ... is but the medium through which its individual members seek to make more effective the expression of their own views.
(a) its members would otherwise have standing to sue in their own right; (b) the interests it seeks to protect are germane to the organization's purpose; and (c) neither the claim asserted nor the relief requested requires the participation of individual members in the lawsuit.
Georgia's contention that no appellant has standing to raise (the claim that the limitation of school-board membership to freeholders violates the Equal Protection Clause of the fourteenth amendment) is without merit. The appellant Calvin Turner is a freeholder, but the appellant Joseph Heath is not. Heath's motion to intervene was granted by the District Court for the express purpose of adding a party plaintiff to the case to ensure that the court could reach the merits of this issue. Georgia also argues that the question is not properly before us because the record is devoid of evidence that the freeholder requirement actually has operated to exclude anyone from the Taliaferro County board of education. But the appellant Heath's allegation that he is not a freeholder is uncontested, and Georgia can hardly urge that her county officials may be depended on to ignore a provision of state law.
Nor can (earlier standing cases) be distinguished on the ground that (other constitutional provisions) are in some way less “fundamental” than the Establishment Clause. Each establishes a norm of conduct which ... government is bound to honor-to no greater or lesser extent *699 than any other inscribed in the Constitution. To the extent the Court of Appeals relied on a view of standing under which the Art. III burdens diminish as the “importance” of the claim on the merits increases, we reject that notion .... (W)e know of no principled basis on which to create a hierarchy of constitutional values or a complementary “sliding scale” of standing which might permit respondents to invoke the judicial power of the United States.
No religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office, or public trust, in this State, nor shall anyone be excluded from holding office on account of his religious sentiments, provided he acknowledge the existence of a Supreme Being.
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