A unanimous Supreme Court on Monday upheld the "Solomon Amendment" that assures military recruiters they may seek to sign up students at the nation's law schools. The Court ruled that the military must be given access even though it violates the law schools' policy against facilitating discrimination against homosexuals. Moreover, the Court declared, law schools could not exclude the military even if they also excluded all other potential employers that declined to hire gays and lesbians.Chief Justice Roberts writes the opinion. There are no additional opinions. (Alito, of course, does not participate.)
As the unanimity indicates, this outcome was not at all surprising. Here's my post on the reports after the oral argument, at which point it was rather obvious that the government was going to win.
(I dread seeing all the opinion pieces that connect this case to "Brokeback Mountain" not winning the Best Picture Oscar.)
MORE: From the case:
The law schools object to having to treat military recruiters like other recruiters, but that regulation of conduct does not violate the First Amendment. To the extent that the Solomon Amendment incidentally affects expression, the law schools' effort to cast themselves as just like the schoolchildren in Barnette, the parade organizers in Hurley, and the Boy Scouts in Dale plainly overstates the expressive nature of their activity and the impact of the Solomon Amendment on it, while exaggerating the reach of our First Amendment precedents.
YET MORE: I want to express my deepest thanks to Chief Justice Roberts for gathering the Justices onto one clearly written opinion. There is no blather or hedging in the prose. He has obviously taken great pains to put every sentence in plain English. He deals with all the precedents, handling most of the cases in one or two crisp sentences. You may not appreciate how beautiful this thinking and writing is, but I do, and I think generations of law students will.
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