Posted on 09/20/2003 12:22:52 AM PDT by ppaul
An organization of law schools and a group representing hundreds of legal scholars sued the Department of Defense and five other federal agencies yesterday, seeking to help universities and colleges that want to keep military recruiters off their campuses because of the department's "don't ask, don't tell" policy on gay men and lesbians.
The suit challenges the constitutionality of a federal law that punishes universities with loss of some federal money if they use their antidiscrimination policies to exclude military recruiters.
It follows a successful campaign by the Defense Department to force some of the nation's most prestigious law schools to allow military recruiters on campus. In recent years, the department has advised Harvard, Yale, Columbia and 20 other universities that they could lose federal aid if they did not allow recruiters at their law schools. For some universities, the dispute put at risk hundreds of millions of dollars for research on everything from weapons systems to the humanities.
By this past summer, "every law school whose institution receives federal funds caved to the military's demands," according to the complaint filed yesterday in Newark before Judge John C. Lifland.
The suit says that every accredited American law school has adopted policies that bar discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, and that the schools have sought to apply these policies without making any exception for what the suit describes as "the military and its discriminatory policy regarding sexual orientation."
Some law schools barred military recruiters from entering their campuses. Others allowed them entry while arranging visits under conditions that set them apart from recruiters representing law firms and corporations whose practices the law schools do not consider discriminatory.
In 1995, Congress passed the Solomon amendment, named for its sponsor, Representative Gerald B. H. Solomon of New York, barring disbursement of money from the Departments of Defense, Transportation, Health and Human Services, Education and some other federal agencies to any college or university that obstructed campus recruiting by the military.
The suit filed yesterday argues that the Solomon amendment violates law schools' First Amendment rights to academic freedom.
"The plaintiffs are seeking to prohibit enforcement of the Solomon amendment," said Michael Chagares, chief of the civil division of the United States attorney's office in Newark. "We will contend that the Solomon amendment is constitutional and will seek to prohibit any limitation on its enforcement."
The plaintiffs asked Judge Lifland to order the government immediately to stop threatening restrictions on federal money to law schools as a result of the recruiting dispute, pending the lawsuit's outcome. He denied the request.
The organization of law schools that filed the suit, the Forum for Academic and Institutional Rights, includes "at least five" prominent law schools.....
Yeah.
Let the radical lesbians, homosexuals, every stripe of pervert and anti-American, anti-Christian, leftist outfit recruit on campus - but God forbid we should allow a "hate" group like the US Army or other branch of the military.
These schools are crankin' out lawyers by the thousands - our future prosecutors, judges, congressmen. Is it any wonder our legal system is screwed up?
The law schools are behind them all the way.
Well, the law IS an ass.
"Humanist philosophy is what it's all about
I'm so open-minded that my brain_leaks_out..."
- Steve Taylor
We need the military. We have more than enough lawyers.
If we closed the law schools, more people could train for a productive occupation.
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