The Supreme Court unanimously upheld the Solomon Amendment March 6, requiring law schools to provide military recruiters with the same access granted to other employers in order to conduct business and interviews on law school campuses.
Schools who fail to meet this requirement will face a cut in their federal funding.
While various schools nationwide submitted amicus briefs expressing opinions on the case, University Law Prof. Robert O'Neil said the University was not involved in the litigation.
In the case of the University's Law School, the adjacent Judge Advocate General's Corps (JAG) School has provided military recruiters an alternate location for conducting such interviews.
The Solomon Amendment was opposed in the case by the Forum for Academic and Institutional Rights. Other organizations such as the American Civil Liberties Union and the American Association of University Professors also filed briefs in the case opposing the Amendment.
These opponents of the Solomon Amendment share the view that law schools should not have to accommodate groups whose policy on homosexuality is "don't ask, don't tell," O'Neil said.
Air Force Lt. Col. Ellen Krenke, a Pentagon spokesperson, said recruiters' presence on law school campuses enables the military to recruit diverse and well-qualified individuals.
J.D. Barnea, an attorney from the Heller Ehrman firm who represented FAIR in the case, said the main constitutional argument FAIR used against the Solomon Amendment was the "compelled speech doctrine" under the First Amendment.
"That doctrine says the government cannot force you to say something against your will," Barnea said. "There were [previous] cases that said you cannot be forced by the government to be the medium through which someone else's message reaches the public."
Barnea explained that the Supreme Court used a narrow interpretation to come to its decision.
"The Supreme Court said from now on, you only have a right to object to being an intermediary if [that] impacts your own message in some way," Barnea said.
While FAIR was unsuccessful in overturning the Solomon Amendment, Barnea said that educational communities can still protest the presence of military recruiters.
"The court went out of its way to say that nothing in their opinion has any impact on schools' rights to protest against the military," Barnea said. "Schools have the right to let students know that the military is a discriminatory employer."
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