The University’s decision was directly related to defined and established professional standards. Two sets of professional standards provided the foundation for the University’s decision: one governing sexual relationships with children and another governing the education of disabled students…. To protect a student’s “safety,” a secondary school teacher must protect underage students from sexual contact with adults, which may qualify as first-degree sexual assault under Hawaii law….

[And the university’s] national accreditation body mandates that student teachers demonstrate “professional dispositions necessary to help all students learn,” including students with disabilities. See also Nat’l Council for Accreditation of Teacher Educ., Standards for Professional Development Schools 25 (2001) (explaining that accredited programs must “reflect issues of equity and access to knowledge by diverse learners”). Moreover, the HTSB requires all student teachers to “[p]rovide services to students in a nondiscriminatory manner” and “[a]dapt[] instruction to students’ differences in development, learning styles, strengths and needs.”

The First Amendment does not prevent the University from denying Oyama’s student teaching application after determining that his statements reflected a failure to absorb these defined and established professional standards…. [T]he scope of the government’s authority to regulate speech within its institutions depends upon the objectives those institutions are designed to achieve….

We emphasize that the University did not “establish” or “define” these professional standards by fiat. Its decision was not … based on school policies untethered to any external standards, regulations, or statutes governing the profession. Instead, the University relied upon standards established by state and federal law, the Hawaii Department of Education, the HTSB, and the University’s national accreditation agency, the NCATE….

That Oyama did not in fact consummate the acts proscribed by these professional standards does not mean that the University’s decision to deny his application was not directly related to them. State policy required the University to “[v]erify” Oyama’s “ability to function effectively in Department classrooms” before approving his student teaching application. Therefore, the University’s decision was, by necessity, prospective in nature.

Oyama stood in the doorway of the teaching profession; he was not at liberty to step inside and break the house rules. But that does not mean that the University was obligated to invite him in.

Rather, the University could look to what Oyama said as an indication of what he would do once certified. Oyama’s statements concerning “child predation” and “inclusion” of disabled students suggest that he had not internalized basic concepts embodied in the relevant external standards — the nature of sexual predation on children, for example, or the importance of including and supporting disabled students. The University need not — and, consistent with its mandate under state policy, could not — have approved Oyama’s application and sat idly by while his failure to accept basic professional standards led to results these standards were designed to prevent.

For example, with regard to the sexual abuse of children, Oyama’s belief that young children can meaningfully “consent” to sexual activity with adults, and failure to appreciate the lifelong impact on victims of child sexual abuse, could well impede him from recognizing signs of such abuse in his students or evidence of such abuse by school personnel. His promise to report illegal abuse is therefore beside the point; he can only report what he perceives, and his attitudes could well stand in the way of his perception.

Similarly, with regard to teaching disabled children, the University was entitled to regard Oyama’s insistence that most disabilities are feigned and that requiring high school teachers to educate disabled students is unreasonable as indicators that he would not make the effort to identify students with disabilities or adjust his lessons for individual students whose disabilities require special accommodations. Given these legitimate concerns, the University could “tak[e] action” and deny Oyama’s application before permitting him to enter the classroom as a student teacher.