Meanwhile, in July 2007, the Yong America’s Foundation (YAF), a non-profit group active on college campuses, sued Secretary of Defense Robert Gates demanding that he enforce the Solomon Amendment against the University of California at Santa Cruz (UCSC), which, for three years running, had allowed protests and near riots by professors and students to drive military recruiters from the campus. UCSC’s antics were known to the Department of Defense (DOD); not only had they made national news, the U.S. Army Recruiting Battalion Commander for UCSC’s region had informed DOD of them and urged that it withhold the more than $80 million in federal funds UCSC receives annually.
Given the vigor with which federal lawyers had defended the Solomon Amendment, many assumed that DOD would acknowledge its duty to enforce it against the UCSC and its intent to do so. Instead, the first filing by federal lawyers was -- not an “answer,” which would have allowed the case to proceed to the merits but -- a motion to dismiss. Federal lawyers raised a host of procedural barriers to YAF’s lawsuit, the worst of which was their embrace of the UCSC’s claim that the recruiters’ inability to appear on campus was not the UCSC’s fault! It “complied with. . . the Solomon Amendment,” said the UCSC, but “individuals or groups” exercising their “right. . . to hold a legal and nonviolent protest” drove recruiters away.
In their motion, federal lawyers echoed these sentiments, arguing, first, that the case may not proceed in the absence of the “third parties” who had caused YAF’s injuries, that is, the protesting “individuals or groups,” and second, that withholding $80 million from the UCSC will not ensure the ability of recruiters to appear on campus. A ruling on the motion is likely this spring; however, one thing is sure. After years defending the Solomon Amendment, federal lawyers have now handed radical campuses the way to escape its enforcement.