Military Wins Important Battle

(This article is cross-posted at AtlasBlogged)

A coalition of 36 law schools including Yale, Harvard, and Columbia were defeated by the First Amendment today, despite their best efforts. It is an uncontested fact that universities who wish to ban military recruiters from equal access on campus are free to do so - we have the right to associate freely, after all. But SCOTUS ruled 8-0 that the federal government does not have to continue to fund such institutions if they don't provide recruiters with equal access to students on campus.

The universities sued to challenge the Solomon Amendment on the grounds that military recruiters represent a violation of the campus policies of the schools not to assist employers who discriminate based on race, sex, or sexual orientation. The military, of course, does not allow open homosexuality.

The law schools argued that, at a minimum, they shouldn't have to actively help military recruiters by distributing their literature or arranging interviews with students. Chief Justice Roberts responded in the decision;

A military recruiter's mere presence on campus does not violate a law school's right to associate, regardless of how repugnant the law school considers the recruiter's message,

I could have sworn that I had written on this issue in the past, but I can't find it... I must be thinking of comments I posted on another blog. I remember watching the arguments on C-Span back in December, and noting that the justices seemed very clear in their opinion at that time. One noted that it is highly unlikely that any student could mistake the military policy on homosexuals to be a policy endorsed by the universities where recruiters would interview prospective legal officers. The thought of a Columbia law student sitting across the table from a JAG officer and assuming that the recruiter represented the university - well, let's just say I got a kick out of that image.

So now what will these schools do? Can they turn their backs on the money, over the principle of treating gays (but not recruiters) equally? How much money is at stake?
From Bloomberg:

The federal government provides almost $35 billion a year to universities through research grants, government contracts and other sources, according to the American Association of University Professors. The financial stake is one reason almost every law school has agreed to give equal access to the military.

Emphasis mine. That's a big twinkie. The schools will allow recruiters on campus, and will bend over backwards letting students know how they feel about the recruiters and the policies of the military. And that's fine with me - let them tell the students anything they like, provided it is truthful and the recruiters are given the same recruiting opportunities that other employers are.

More from Bloomberg:

The Defense Department has listed only three schools -- New York Law School, Vermont Law School in South Royalton, Vermont, and William Mitchell College of Law in St. Paul, Minnesota -- as being in violation of the Solomon Amendment, according to Joshua Rosenkrantz, the lead lawyer for the challengers. All three schools are independent institutions, so their actions don't jeopardize funding for any other university departments.

At one point, the Solomon Amendment included a threat to withhold student financial aid. That provision was removed in 2000.

By the way, the full text of the Rumsfeld v FAIR ruling can be found here.