SAN FRANCISCO (AP) – The city of Berkeley can charge marina fees to youth sailors connected with the Boy Scouts of America in response to the Scouts’ discriminatory policies, the state Supreme Court, in a 7-0 decision, ruled March 9.

Cities have the right to require organizations and individuals who receive public money to “provide written, unambiguous assurances of compliances with a generally applicable nondiscrimination policy,” Justice Kathryn Mickle Werdegar said in her opinion for the court.

“Berkeley reasonably concluded the Sea Scouts did not and could not provide satisfactory assurances because of their required adherence to [the Boy Scouts’] discriminatory policies,” Werdegar wrote.

The court unanimously rejected claims by the Berkeley Sea Scouts that the city violated the group’s free speech and freedom of association rights by charging it berthing fees, which nonprofit groups that comply with a 1997 nondiscrimination law do not pay.

The city revoked the group’s subsidies in 1998 because the Boy Scouts bar atheist and gay members. It’s one of several cases in which federal, state and local governments have distanced themselves from the Scouts.

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2000 that the Boy Scouts’ membership policies are legal, but the state high court ruled that governments remain able to deny benefits to organizations that discriminate.

“What the California Supreme Court said was that private clubs can discriminate, but the taxpayers don’t have to fund that discrimination,” Berkeley City Attorney Manuela Albuquerque said.

Scouts spokesperson Bob Bork called the ruling “another in a continuing legal backlash against the Boy Scouts for asserting and winning its constitutional rights in the United States Supreme Court.”