"Feds gone wild"

The City of Brotherly Love ruled against the Solomon Amendment on Monday, deeming it unconstitutional for the federal government to withhold funding for universities that refuse to comply with military recruiting on their campuses.

The New York Times' report on the ruling sums up the smacked-down Amendment nicely: "The 1995 law at issue in the decision, the Solomon Amendment, barred the federal government from disbursing money to colleges and universities that obstruct campus recruiting by the military. As amended and interpreted over the years, the law prohibits disbursements to all parts of a university, including its physics department and medical school, if any of its units, like its law school, make military recruiting even a little more difficult." ("Colleges Can Bar Army Recruiters," Nov. 30) A panel of three Philly federal appeals court judges essentially reversed the Solomon Amendment yesterday on the grounds that the law violated the First Amendment rights of academic institutions. The violation, according to the ruling, forced universities to align themselves with military policies, like discrimination against gays, that they may not agree with.

Full Article : journaltimes.com