42. Is the law school's denial of the use of its meeting room for this purpose constitutional?

A is correct. The meeting rooms are a designated public forum, because the law school makes the rooms generally available for extracurricular student use—in other words, the «first-come, first-served basis» policy means that the public university has thrown open a nonpublic forum for use at a particular time. Designated public forums are treated like public forums while they are open, so the policy would avoid strict scrutiny if it was content-neutral, narrowly tailored to an important government purpose, and left open alternative channels. Because the law school's denial of the room use was based on the content of the students' expression, the denial must be tested by strict scrutiny. The law school would need to prove that its denial was necessary to serve a compelling governmental interest, which it could not achieve here because its goal was merely to avoid «friction» and disrupting the mission.

B is incorrect. This answer reaches the correct answer with the wrong reasoning. The law school's action is unconstitutional because it is content-based, as discussed above, and is presumptively unconstitutional. It is an incorrect application of the law to assert that the school need only satisfy rational basis review, which is the standard laid out in this answer choice.

C is incorrect. This concern by the law school regarding the effect of the debate on the audience and mission is not, in fact, a sufficient basis for upholding the regulation. Rather, it is not a compelling interest that would withstand the applicable standard of strict scrutiny, as stated above.

D is incorrect. The law school's policy makes the meeting room a designated public forum, which means that it is treated like a public forum. Based on the policy, the room can be used for meetings that are not organized and sponsored by the school.