Yale Profs Lose Military Recruiter Appeal
A federal appeals court has ruled that the federal government may deny funding to Yale Law School for barring military recruiters from campus.
The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals cited a 2006 U.S. Supreme Court ruling upholding the Solomon Amendment, which bars certain federal funding to schools that reject military recruiters. Yale professors had argued the Supreme Court did not consider the issue of whether the statute violated the First Amendment right to academic freedom, the New York Law Journal reports.
The 2nd Circuit disagreed, saying the court “almost certainly” rejected that argument in Forum for Academic and Institutional Rights v. Rumsfeld. “Plaintiffs … have no First Amendment claim that is not either lacking in merit or that has not already been rejected by the Supreme Court,” the appeals panel said in Burt v. Gates (PDF).
