Appeals court rules colleges can bar military recruiters

In a major victory for NYU, a federal appeals court struck down the Solomon amendment yesterday, asserting that schools have a First Amendment right to obstruct military recruiters from campus without risking the loss of federal funding. Reversing a lower court's ruling, a three-judge panel of the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia voted 2-to-1 to immediately suspend the law, which had punished colleges and universities that closed their doors to recruiters in protest of the military's ban on gays.
The ruling is a boon for the NYU School of Law, a member of the Forum for Academic and Institutional Rights, the lead plaintiff. The court said the Solomon amendment is a violation of free speech because it unfairly mandated that the law schools help disseminate a message with which they disagree.