Ruling That Colleges Can Bar Military Recruiters Faces Fight

The House has approved a measure calling for the government to contest a federal court decision that educational institutions have a First Amendment right to keep military recruiters off their campuses to protest the policy of excluding gays from military service. "Congress encourages the executive branch to follow the doctrine of non-acquiescence and not find a decision affecting one jurisdiction to be binding on other jurisdictions," said the resolution, which was approved on Wednesday. The Justice Department said Friday that it planned to ask the Supreme Court to hear an appeal on the recruitment issue, allowing military officials to visit law schools, in particular, to find lawyers for the Judge Advocate General's Corps. Lawmakers who supported the bill said recruiting on college campuses afforded the military, like any corporate enterprise, access to highly qualified prospective employees. The nation's security interests, they said, demand such effective recruitment.  But critics of the measure said the military's policy of discharging personnel who are discovered to be gay runs counter to any effort to expand a military that has shrunk since the cold war and remains stressed by overseas deployment. The measure, a nonbinding resolution, passed by a vote of 327 to 84. While some gay rights groups have said momentum is building for Congress to consider changing the military's policy toward gays, the overwhelming support for the measure raises questions about such a shift. The federal court decision, handed down in November by a three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit in Philadelphia, found that universities may bar military recruiters from their campuses without risking the loss of federal money. [more]