Rumsfeld v. Forum for Academic &
Institutional Rights, Inc. case brief summary
547 U.S. 47 (2006)
CASE SYNOPSIS
Respondent association of law schools
and law faculties alleged that the Solomon Amendment, 10
U.S.C.S. § 983, which tied federal funding for institutions of
higher education with giving military recruiters access equal to that
provided to other recruiters, infringed its members' First
Amendment freedoms of speech and association. The U.S. Court of
Appeals for the Third Circuit ordered that enforcement of the Solomon
Amendment be enjoined.DISCUSSION
- The Court held that:
- (1) institutions could not comply with the Solomon Amendment by applying a general nondiscrimination policy to exclude military recruiters as it did not focus on the content of a school's recruiting policy, but instead, looked to the result achieved by the policy and compared the access provided military recruiters to that provided other recruiters;
- (2) because the First Amendment would not prevent Congress from directly imposing the Solomon Amendment's access requirement, the statute did not place an unconstitutional condition on the receipt of federal funds;
- (3) the Solomon Amendment did not dictate the content of law schools' speech at all, which was only "compelled" if, and to the extent, the school provided such speech for other recruiters;
- (4) there was nothing approaching a Government-mandated pledge or motto that the law schools had to endorse; and
- (5) accommodating the military's message did not affect law schools' speech, because the schools were not speaking when they host interviews and recruiting receptions, i.e., the accommodation did not sufficiently interfere with any message of the law schools.
CONCLUSION
The judgment of the Third Circuit was reversed and the case was remanded for further proceedings.
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