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Judges order Pentagon to halt law school recruiting tactics.
Byline: Marcella Bombardieri
Nov. 30--The federal law that forces law schools to allow military recruiters on campus is an unconstitutional violation of schools' First Amendment rights, according to a ruling handed down by an appeals court in Philadelphia yesterday.
A three-judge panel issued an injunction prohibiting the Pentagon from enforcing the Solomon Amendment, which had compelled Harvard, Yale, Boston College, and many other universities to allow military recruiters on campus despite the fact that the US policy against gays serving openly in the military violates the schools' nondiscrimination rules.
"The Solomon Amendment requires law schools to express a message that is incompatible with their educational objectives, and no compelling governmental interest has been shown to deny this freedom," Judge Thomas L. Ambro wrote for the two-judge majority in the US Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit.
Yesterday's decision was in response to a lawsuit filed by a group of law schools and professors and marked a victory for those who have opposed what they called the heavy-handed tactics used by the Department of Defense at law schools around the country. The Solomon Amendment allows the government to withhold a large portion of federal funding from universities that bar military recruiters, and beginning in 2002, the Pentagon began a campaign of using the law to pressure schools to allow its recruiters on campus. Many of the schools reluctantly decided they could not jeopardize their federal support by barring the recruiters.
The Solomon Amendment applies to military recruiters at all universities, but the battle over enforcement has largely been fought at law schools because the group that accredits law schools requires them to have a nondiscrimination policy that includes sexual orientation.
The injunction ordered by the court applies nationally, said E. Joshua Rosenkranz, a New York lawyer who argued the case on behalf of the group of law schools. To overturn it, the government would have to file an appeal with either the full Third Circuit or the US Supreme Court. Two other lawsuits challenging the Solomon Amendment are pending.
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