High Court to Hear Military Recruitment Case

It would help if, first, you had a link to this story from a (one would hope) neutral source. Second, it would help if you either made an open invitation for discussion, or stated your position as an invitation to debate. As it stands right now, my immediate response is: "Yeah . . . so?"

Setanta, well here's the source but I aint sure how neutral they are. http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,177754,00.html At any rate it's Supreme Court news and probably most mainstream media are carrying it. "Yeah so" is kinda like saying this is a frivilous question or something. I consider it big news and I think the universities and Pentagon and Supreme Court agree. My position on this is the Pentagon seems to want preferential treatment over other employers seeking to recruit on campus. I dont think that's right or Constitutional. Equal rights under law should be protected. I dont blame Universities from barring military recruiters. The law is on their side. Should be interesting to see if the SC is going to redefine equal rights under law.

Okay, I'll bite. In what way is the military seeking preferential treatment by recruiting the same as other employers?

"Most law schools have broad non-discrimination policies and have traditionally refrained from assisting employers who do not meet equal opportunity guidelines. Employers seeking to recruit on campus usually must sign a form stating they do not discriminate on the basis of race, national origin, gender, sex and sexual orientation in their hiring practices.

After "don't ask, don't tell" was enacted, military recruiters had to turn away openly gay students seeking employment with the armed forces. Because military recruiters could not sign the anti-discrimination form, many law schools, including those at Yale and Harvard, stopped inviting them to recruit on campus."

If the school has such a policy - fair answer.

Here's more info. "Minneapolis, Minn. ?- Congress clamped down on schools that denied military recruiters on campus last year. It tightened restrictions under the so-called Solomon Amendment, which requires schools that receive federal funding to give recruiters the same access to their career placement offices as other employers.

Schools that refused could lose funding from the Departments of Defense, Labor, Health and Human Services, National Nuclear Security Administration, and the CIA. Even if an individual school, such as a law school, denied recruiters access, the entire university would be subject to a loss of funding.

Rep. John Kline, R-Minn., and a former Marine, was an early supporter of the Soloman Amendment. He was incensed that schools receiving federal funds were denying the military access to campus.

"We have troops engaged in combat and we have schools who are taking federal money, but denying our military the ability to come on campus and recruit; it's just outrageous," says Kline.

While the law schools oppose the Solomon Amendment, they are main disagreement is with the government's policy that bans gays from the military. That policy says a service-member must leave the military if he or she "engaged in...a homosexual act", "stated that he or she is a homosexual" or "married or attempted to marry a person known to be of the same biological sex."

University of Minnesota Law Professor Beverly Balos says while the U of M Law school has allowed the military access, the school opposes the military's practice. The school has joined a consortium of law schools around the country challenging the Solomon Amendment in court.



University of Minnesota Law School.

"By forcing us to have military recruiters on campus, they are forcing us to engage in a kind of speech and a kind of association that we disagree with," Balos says.

The schools argue the government is interfering with their right to free speech. It is unrealistic for them, they say, to forgo federal funding. They say posting recruiting signs, handing out literature and arranging interviews, give the impression the law schools support discrimination against gays.

Professor Balos emphasizes that the law schools are not anti-military, but anti-discrimination.
http://news.minnesota.publicradio.org/features/2005/11/28_stawickie_recruiting/

The military is not seeking to recruit the same as other employers. Other employers are required to adhere to anti-discrimination policies as a prerequisite to interviewing on campus. The military is seeking to interview on campus without having to adhere to anti-discrimination policies. That is the preferential treatment.

That was answered by blueflame, joe.

Clash over military recruiters on campus
Clash over military recruiters on campus
By Warren Richey | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
12/6/05

High court must decide if schools can discriminate against military if it discriminates against gays.

WASHINGTON - Less than a week after it heard arguments in an abortion notification case, the US Supreme Court Tuesday takes up another hot-button issue in the nation's culture wars. This time it involves law-school protests designed to end discrimination against gays in the military.
At the center of the legal showdown: to what extent military recruiters should have access to law school campuses. The case involves conflicting conceptions of free speech. It also could erode some civil rights laws, which use federal funding to encourage nondiscrimination.

On one side of the current case are a group of law professors and law schools seeking equal treatment of gays interested in serving the nation as members of the armed forces. In protest of the Pentagon's "don't ask, don't tell" policy banning openly gay individuals from the military, the law schools restricted military recruiters from fully participating in school-sponsored employment events.

Military recruiters could still come to campuses, but the law schools' employment placement offices would not assist them. The message was that the schools would not abet military discrimination against some of their own students.

Congress and the Pentagon responded to the law schools' restrictions by passing the Solomon Amendment. It threatens to cut off federal funding to any college or university that does not provide military recruiters the same access to law students as it does to any other potential employer.

Such a sanction would cost Yale and Harvard universities $300 million a year each in lost federal grants and contracts, according to briefs in the case. New York University would lose $130 million. Overall, universities receive nearly $35 billion a year in federal funding.

Concerned about the potential impact, the law schools and law professors formed the Forum for Academic and Institutional Rights and filed suit against Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and other government officials.

Rumsfeld v. FAIR is significant because it involves Congress's constitutional authority to raise and support American armed forces at a time of national peril. It also pits Congress's constitutional power to use federal funding as an incentive against the First Amendment right of law schools and law professors to wage protests without facing massive government coercion and retaliation.

Government lawyers argue that the Solomon Amendment is not a direct command that law schools abandon their protests against military recruiters. It is merely a common-sense condition upon which any donor would insist, they say.

"The United States makes available substantial federal funding that assists in the education of students, and in return seeks only the same opportunity to recruit those students that is extended to other employers," writes Solicitor General Paul Clement in his brief to the court.

In effect, the government is placing a price tag on the law school protests. Continue the protests and forfeit the money, or accept the money and allow military recruiters equal access.

Lawyers for the law schools say this demand amounts to unconstitutional government-coerced speech. If the law school's policy is to only deal with those recruiters who sign a nondiscrimination pledge, the government's condition for receipt of federal funding is a demand not for equal treatment of recruiters but for exceptional treatment for a discriminatory employer.

"It is a demand that a law school accord the military 'most-favored-recruiter' status, even as the recruiters discriminate against the school's own students," writes E. Joshua Rosenkranz in his brief on behalf of the law schools.

In addition to the free-speech implications, the case is also being closely watched because how the high court resolves the dispute could undercut civil rights laws. Several statutes rely on the threat to withdraw federal funding as leverage to encourage recipients not to discriminate on the basis of race, gender, age, or disability, among others. A broad ruling in favor of the law schools could place some of those laws in constitutional doubt, analysts say.

The law schools' First Amendment case is weak, says Daniel Polsby, dean of George Mason University School of Law. He says the Solomon Amendment is a regulation of behavior, not speech. "The government doesn't care about what positions anyone is taking. The Solomon Amendment leaves the schools free to teach what they want to teach, it leaves the professors free to say what they want to say," Professor Polsby says. "All it says is we don't want you to Jim Crow our recruiters anymore. Let them in the same way you let in hundreds of other recruiters and treat them the same way."

Yale Law School Professor William Eskridge disagrees. He says his school's stand against discrimination sends an important message to gay students on campus that they are fully accepted members of the Yale community. The Solomon Amendment undermines that message, he says.

He says conditioning the entire university's receipt of $300 million in federal funding upon the actions of the law school is like withholding someone's Medicare payment because of what that person's sister says about the government.

Counter-Recruitment Rally & March in Solidarity w FAIR v Rumsfeld Supreme Court Case
by College Not Combat (reposted) Saturday, Dec. 03, 2005 at 10:33 PM
Berkeley Stop the War Coalition is meeting at 3:00 at Berkeley BART on Shattuck, and taking BART to SF to confront military recruiters. CAN (the Campus Antiwar Network) has been getting lots of press lately, and is beginning to be seen as the frontline of student grassroots antiwar activism. This is a great opportunity to build CAN and to confront military recruiters off campus with some of our allies from SF state, high schools, and community activists. Please come build this event!

NO TO THE SOLOMON AMENDMENT!
COLLEGE NOT COMBAT!
BRING THE TROOPS HOME NOW!

Counter-Recruitment Rally & March in Solidarity w FAIR v Rumsfeld Supreme Court Case!!!
Tuesday, Dec 6, 4:00 PM

On Dec 6, the Supreme Court will decide the constitutionality of the Solomon Amendment, which denies federal funding for schools that don't allow military recruitment on campus in the historical case of FAIR v Rumsfeld. You are invited to join students and activists in the Campus Antiwar Network and many others for a RALLY AND MARCH in solidarity with the counter-recruitment activists in the Supreme Court case!

WE WILL RALLY at Justin Herman Plaza (near Ferry Building at Market St & Embarcadero) at 4:00 PM. Speakers will include Aimee Allison of Central Committee for Conscientious Objectors and the Prop I Committee, a College Not Combat representative, a Campus Antiwar Network representative, and others. Music provided by local artists & drummers.

WE WILL MARCH to Davis Street Recruitment Station, 670 Davis Street, to voice our outrage. Creative acts of solidarity are encouraged and welcome.

To get there: Take BART to Embarcadero Station, walk 3 blocks North past Hyatt Regency towards Ferry Building.

Sixty percent San Francisco voters supported Prop I to oppose military recruitment in schools and to support scholarships to counteract the economic draft of low-income students, overwhelmingly of color, who are used as cannon fodder for an unjust war.

The Campus Antiwar Network opposes the withholding of federal funds as retaliation against schools, their students, and others who demand REAL CAREER OPPORTUNITIES and EDUCATION OPPORTUNITIES.

NO TO THE SOLOMON AMENDMENT!
COLLEGE NOT COMBAT!

The Counter-Recruitment movement is an interesting happening also. It goes beyond this Supreme Court action. COME DIE IN IRAQ
The on-campus recruitment battle
BY DEIRDRE FULTON
At the end of the summer, Department of Defense officials admitted publicly that the department had fallen far short of its recruitment goals for this year. (The Army is expected to meet or exceed its re-enlistment goals, but it is expected to fall short by more than 10,000 new recruits, or 12.5 percent.) To reverse the trend, recruiters have been offering more money to enlistees, in the form of signing bonuses and college scholarships, and pushing to ease both age and testing requirements for potential recruits. But increasingly, recruiters find themselves struggling not only against dismal headlines, but against a growing anti-war movement that aims to block recruitment on high-school and college campuses through a strategy they call counter-recruitment.

"The key thing is action," says 22-year-old Tom Arabia, a New England Conservatory of Music graduate who leads campus counter-recruitment efforts ?- such as protests, rallies, and information campaigns ?- in the Boston area. When he "dorm-storms" on the Northeastern University campus, knocking on students' doors and asking them how they feel about the war, more than half say they disapprove, Arabia reports. "People want to do **** right now. When we counter-recruit, we hit the military where it hurts. It's getting them right in the jugular."

http://www.bostonphoenix.com/boston/news_features/this_just_in/documents/05123098.asp

Re: Clash over military recruiters on campus


No, the government is placing a price tag on continuing to give money to these schools. Personally, if these schools want to stand up for principles, then they should be more than willing to forego the money and manage to get by off of their massive endowment funds.

Re: Clash over military recruiters on campus


That raises an interesting question CR. It would imply that the govt can punish people that disagree with it. A stance that appears to be highly unconstituional since it violates both the free speech and the equal protection clause. You can't treat people differently just because they exercise their rights.

I suppose if there were any out there wondering if Judge Roberts was 'really' conservative, a peek at some of his arguments in this case provides clues

Interesting article with arguments and comments by some Justices. "Campus access sought for military" December 7, 2005


ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.washingtontimes.com/national/20051206-105109-7820r.htm