This Won't Hurt a Bit

Posted by Jedmunds

Doug Lederman of Inside Higher Ed reports that the Department of Defense is enforcing the Solomon Amendment, which bars federal funds to universities who prohibit military recruiting on campuses usually due to enforcing a non-discrimination policy against gays, against New York Law School and possibly two other law schools that are also unaffiliated with larger universities.

Yale Law School, which successfully won an injunction against enforcement of the Solomon amendment in the third circuit will also continue to bar military recruiters from campus, but interestingly, the Department of Defense has indicated no interest in penalizing Harvard who's Law School has also announced it will bar military recruiters, but is not located in the third circuit, and so is still subject to the heavy penalties the Solomon amendment imposes.  Because it bans all federal funding except financial aid for students  to law schools in violation as well as any DOD funding in terms of grants and contracts to the parent university, the law schools targeted for enforcement will be relatively unaffected by the enforcement.  Two of the three law schools had no current federal funds at stake, and I'm unsure abour the third.

 

I’m not sure if the Department of Defense is just picking on the little guy here or what. I suppose the law schools they chose for enforcement probably wouldn’t have standing to sue for an injunction, since they’re not really losing anything anyway. So nobody really makes a fuss and you’ve got something symbolic to show “tough” enforcement. Or if on the other hand, they just don’t want to deal with the hassle of finding someone else to do the research that Harvard would otherwise do for them. Or even that the research Harvard does is essential and vital enough to DOD that they aren’t going to let something as stupid as the Solomon Amendment get in the way of it. 

I suppose any number of good reasons can be imagined for not enforcing the Solomon Amendment against Harvard, but I think this ultimately reveals yet another reason that the Solomon amendment in conjunction with the ban on the openly gay serving in the military is ill-conceived. If you can only bring yourself to enforce a law against people who have nothing to lose if you do, then that law needs to be seriously reconsidered.