the same time frame. On October 11, 2017, the BSA announced that girls would be allowed to become Cub Scouts, starting in 2018, and be a part of the Scouts BSA Program, starting on February 1, 2019. The BSA allowed gay youths full participation in 2014 and openly gay adults as leaders in 2015. It is a common belief that the BSA does prohibit members who are atheist and agnostic based on its "duty to God" principle and that members (adult and youth) agree with the Declaration of Religious Principle in the bylaws. However, the BSA has had Buddhist troops since 1920, and Buddhism is a nontheistic religion which does not assert belief in a creator God. The BSA also signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the Unitarian Universalist Association in 2016 which specifically gives ultimate authority over a participant's spiritual welfare to the individual Unitarian Universalist congregation. The MOU also specifically includes within Unitarian Universalist chartered troops Humanism as an acceptable form of spirituality as well as Earth-centered religions. In 2000, the Supreme Court ruled in Boy Scouts of America v. Dale that Boy Scouts and all similar, private voluntary organizations have the constitutionally protected right under the First Amendment of freedom of association to set membership standards. In 2004, the BSA adopted a new policy statement, including a "Youth Leadership" policy that disallowed members to continue in leadership positions in the event they were to hold themselves out as "open and avowed homosexuals. At the Scouts annual meeting in April 2012, a leader from the Northeast presented a resolution that "would allow individual units to accept gays as adult leaders". However, in July 2012, at the culmination of a review started in 2010, an 11-person committee convened by the BSA reached a "unanimous consensus" recommending retaining the current policy. Intel, UPS, and Merck cut financial ties with the BSA over the policy decision. Within the BSA National Executive Board, members James Turley, CEO of Ernst & Young, and Randall Stephenson, CEO of AT&T and who was then "on track to become president of the Scout's national board in 2014" and later was, publicly opposed the policy and stated their intention "to work from within the BSA Board to actively encourage dialogue and sustainable progress" in changing the policy. On January 28, 2013, the BSA announced it was considering rescinding the ban on homosexuals, allowing chartered organizations to determine