Yale law students sue over Defense policyAnn Rostow, Gay.com / PlanetOut.com Network
Friday, October 31, 2003 / 03:56 PM
http://www.planetout.com/pno/about/jobs/splash.html



In the fourth recent lawsuit challenging the Defense Department's insistence on military recruiting, two groups of Yale Law students filed a complaint in federal court on Thursday.

The suits arise from the Bush administration's decision to rigorously enforce the Solomon Amendment, a 1996 law that cuts off federal funds from any institution of higher learning that bars the campus gate to military recruiters. The Clinton administration looked the other way as many of America's top universities made little or no effort to follow the rule, which conflicts with most school's policies against cooperating with employers who discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation.

But the Bush administration decided to get tough. Last summer, most of the leading law schools received letters threatening to cut federal funds to the universities as a whole if the Judge Advocate General (JAG) representatives were not given the same treatment as other recruiters. With over $300 million at stake in grants to Yale University, the Yale Law School was obliged to make an exception to its nondiscrimination policy on behalf of the JAG corps. Other law schools were placed in a similar dilemma.

Last month, a group of law professors and others filed a federal suit in New Jersey contesting enforcement of the Amendment on constitutional grounds. In early October, a group of professors and students at the University of Pennsylvania's Law School filed a similar suit. On Oct. 23, a group of 44 Yale law professors, representing two thirds of the voting members of the faculty, lodged yet another challenge. And now, two New Haven student groups have combined in a fourth attack on the Defense Department.

Thursday's suit was filed by the Student/Faculty Alliance for Military Equality (SAME), and by a group of GLBT Yale law students called the Outlaws. The complaint argues, among other things, that the Defense Department is misapplying the Solomon Act, by requiring that schools provide not just access to students but access that is equal to that given other employers. Further, the threatened funding cut should technically be applied to Yale Law School, not Yale University as a whole.

Also, the students note that the Solomon Act has a loophole for religious schools that teach pacifism. For the government to respect pacifism, while dismissing Yale's belief in anti-discrimination, is a form of viewpoint discrimination, the complaint insists. Finally the imposition of the recruiters is a violation of the students' rights to Freedom of Association. And by implicitly targeting gay and lesbian students, the law, and its enforcement, tramples on the right to equal protection.