The Supreme Court ruled March 6 that universities must allow military recruiters on their campuses or risk losing federal funding, unanimously rejecting the objections of a coalition of law schools that the requirement violates their right to free expression.

The court voted 8-0 to uphold a federal law known as the Solomon Amendment, which allows the government to withhold federal funding from colleges and universities that deny military recruiters campus access equal to that given to other employers and recruiters. A number of law schools have attempted to exclude military recruiters from campus job fairs and other similar events because of the military’s policy barring open gays and lesbians from service.

Justice Samuel Alito, who was not on the court when oral arguments were presented last November, did not vote.

The Supreme Court’s decision overruled a November 2004 decision by the Philadelphia-based Third Circuit Court of Appeals that found the law unconstitutional. That decision raised the possibility that law schools nationwide could have the option of barring military recruiters.

The decision effectively ends legal action against the amendment on campus. Georgetown’s law faculty was part of the coalition of 36 law schools that brought the suit against the Solomon Amendment.

Lawyers for the coalition, called the Forum for Academic and Institutional Rights, argued that the law constitutes “compelled speech” because the military’s policy against openly gay members conflicts with the schools’ own non-discrimination policies.

But the Supreme Court said in its decision that the law does not violate the schools’ First Amendment rights. The decision said that allowing the military to recruit on campus does not imply an endorsement of military policies.

A number of Georgetown administrators, professors and students have actively opposed the amendment. In 2002, more than 100 students and faculty members protested when recruiters from the army and air force arrived at the Law Center campus, and several dozen students protested the ruling the following year.

In a letter to the law community in 2003, Law Center Dean Judith Areen articulated the university’s position, arguing that “permitting recruiters from the Armed Services to interview law students is not consistent with the Law Center’s policy of requiring employers who recruit here to agree not to discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation.”

“Unlike a parade organizer’s choice of parade contingents, a law school’s decision to allow recruiters on campus is not inherently expressive,” Chief Justice John G. Roberts wrote for the court. Roberts added that the law “is not compelled speech because the accommodation does not sufficiently interfere with any message of the school.”

The court also said that Congress’s constitutional authority to raise and provide for the military gives lawmakers the power to withhold federal funds if schools deny the military equal access.

Sylvia Law, a law professor at New York University who helped form FAIR, said that the court had not answered the coalition’s First Amendment concerns, Justices acknowledged that the threat of losing federal funding places strong pressure on universities, she said.

Peter Schuck, a law professor at Yale University, disagreed with FAIR’s position, however, saying that the schools had erred in attempting to challenge the military’s policy barring gays through litigation rather than through open political means.

“Their arguments were weak,” he said. “They should be fighting DADT and the Solomon Amendment through the political process and on the merits, not through the courts based on fanciful arguments.”

Colleges and universities nationwide now face an old choice between permitting military recruiters on campus and losing federal funding. Chai Feldblum, a Georgetown law professor who was also instrumental in forming FAIR, said that many schools, including Georgetown, have already chosen not to give up federal funding.

“I’m recommending that folks now redouble their efforts at education and protest,” she said.

Law also said that the schools should organize protests but move the focus toward the military’s actual policy against its gay members.

“The focus is going to shift from protesting discriminatory access to [protesting] `Don’t ask, Don’t tell,'” she said.