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SCOTUS Upholds Solomon Amendment
Elections have consequences, friends. Gradually, ever so gradually, the grown-ups are regaining control. Faster, please. (Would someone please wake Justice Ginsburg and tell her it's time to retire?)
Supreme Court Rules Against Schools in Military Recruiting Case
The nation's top law schools lost a significant legal argument on Monday when a unanimous Supreme Court ruled that the federal government could withhold funding from schools that bar military recruiters in protest of the anti-gay "don't ask, don't tell" policy.
All eight sitting justices who heard oral arguments in Rumsfeld v. Forum for Academic and Institutional Rights (FAIR) last December rejected the schools' argument that being forced to allow the recruiters on campus violated their First Amendment rights.
"Students and faculty are free to associate to voice their disapproval of the military's message," wrote Chief Justice John Roberts. "Recruiters are, by definition, outsiders who come onto campus for the limited purpose of trying to hire students — not to become members of the school's expressive association."
Daniel Polsby, dean of George Mason University School of Law, said he believed the law schools were merely cloaking their "antipathy" toward the military behind the First Amendment claims.
"I thought the protest angle was pretty much of a pretext," said Polsby, who filed an amicus brief supporting the government. "Why should they protest the military? The military didn't make this policy — Congress made this policy
[Read on here.]
Click here to read the full text of Justice Roberts' very informative written opinion.
James Taranto has an excellent discussion of the matter here, as does Michelle Malkin here.
Jeff Goldstein:
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Finally, a victory for the kind of “diversity” that truly matters.
The decision is a defeat for the anti-military holdover contingent among academics who have held (disingenuously, in my opinion), that they were simply promoting a form of free speech by excluding the “intolerant” speech-act of the military—an argument the ACLU took up in an amicus brief filed on behalf of the law schools:
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For what it’s worth, I am appalled by anyone in the military actively hunting out gays and lesbians in order to have them discharged, and I find that in such cases, the military is engaging in discriminatory actions that violate civil rights. But attempting to punish the entire military—while demanding the right to federal funds that are, at base, protected by that very military—is equally appalling. And worse, it promotes an idea of free speech that welcomes only that free speech that meets previous ideological vetting.
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Nice to see the First Amendment serve free speech. Now, if we could only convince the 14th and 15th Amendments to preclude discriminatory race-based initiatives, we could be well on our way to restoring the Constitution and the Bill of Rights to their condition of intellectual coherence.
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Professor Bainbridge comments here, as does James Joyner here.
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Dafydd ab Hugh has an excellent discussion of the matter here. Even after reading all the things I linked to above I still learned new things from his post. Go read it.
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Professor Bainbridge has a very interesting follow-on post here. Just how wide will the ripples from the Rumsfeld v. Fair decision spread?
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