GOOD!

RUMSFELD ASKED TO DENY FUNDS TO CALIFORNIA COLLEGE

April 12, 2006 - For Immediate Release
Contact: William Perry Pendley

DENVER, CO. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld should withhold federal funds from a California college given the failure of the college to ensure the safe presence of military recruiters on campus, the Secretary was advised by a public interest law firm in a letter released today. According to news reports, military recruiters were forced to flee yesterday from a University of California Santa Cruz job fair because of a raucous mob. Mountain States Legal Foundation advised Rumsfeld that the college’s actions violate the Solomon Amendment, which requires that colleges permit military recruiters on campus or lose all federal funds. UC Santa Cruz received $80 million in federal funds during 2005. A unanimous Supreme Court ruled the Solomon Amendment constitutional early last month.

“It is outrageous that members of the Armed Forces, who are asked to serve in harm’s way in Afghanistan and Iraq, are driven from a campus by a mob in America,” said William Perry Pendley, president and chief legal officer of Mountain States Legal Foundation. “Unless Secretary Rumsfeld responds to this craven violation of federal law, radicals on other campuses will be emboldened, will endanger the lives of men and women in uniform, and will deny students the right to learn how they may serve their country.”

The Solomon Amendment, named after the late Congressman Jerry Solomon (R-NY), requires colleges and universities to allow military recruiters on campuses “at least equal in quality and scope to the [degree of] access to campuses and to students that is provided to any other employer.” The law was enacted in 1996 but was not enforced by the Clinton Administration.

On September 19, 2003, Forum for Academic and Institutional Rights (FAIR), a group of 24 law schools and faculties that oppose military recruiters on college campuses, and its allies filed a lawsuit against Secretary Rumsfeld and five other cabinet officers in the U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey. On November 5, 2003, the District Court ruled against FAIR.

On November 29, 2004, the Third Circuit, by a 2-1 ruling, held the Solomon Amendment violates the freedoms of speech and association of the law schools and their professors because it suppresses their free speech and forces them to associate with a message they “abhor,” that is, the military’s policy as to homosexual activity. The dissent, noting the sophistication of law school faculties and students, wrote that they were able to disassociate themselves from the military’s “message.” The Supreme Court agreed to hear the case on May 2, 2005, after considering a brief filed by Mountain States Legal Foundation. The case was argued on December 6, 2005. On March 6, 2006, the Court upheld the law by a vote of 8-0.

Mountain States Legal Foundation is a nonprofit, public interest law firm dedicated to individual liberty, the right to own and use property, limited and ethical government, and the free enterprise system. Its offices are in the Denver, Colorado, metropolitan area.