|
« AAUP Homepage
|
Supreme Court to Hear Recruiting Case
By Ann Springer
In May, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear FAIR v. Rumsfeld, a case challenging the Solomon Amendment. The Solomon Amendment is a federal law requiring that colleges and universities allow the military full access to recruiting on campus, even though the military does not comply with the schools' policies against aiding employers who discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation. The suit was brought by the Forum for Academic and Institutional Rights (FAIR), a coalition of law schools and their faculty that came together specifically to challenge the law. The AAUP filed an amicus brief in the appellate court in the FAIR case, and will continue to participate as a "friend of the court" before the Supreme Court. The Association will argue that the Solomon Amendment—which punishes universities with a loss of federal funding if a university, or any individual component of it, excludes military recruiters from campus-violates principles of academic freedom and shared governance because it forces law schools and their faculty to change their policies and pedagogical principles in the teaching of ethics, justice, and civil rights.
|