HLS Record

Despite the frigid temperatures, there was a flurry of activity this past weekend at HLS Lambda’s third annual Harvard Lambda Legal Advocacy (HaLLA) Conference. For the past three years, the HaLLA conference (previously called GaLLA) has brought together legal professionals, scholars, activists, and students from around the country to examine complex legal issues facing members of the LGBT community. Past conferences addressed topics including the US military’s Don’t Ask Don’t Tell policy, same-sex marriage, and homophobia in the Boy Scouts of America.

This year’s conference, TransLaw, focused on the intersections and interactions between transgender communities and the law. The conference was organized by co-chairs Sarah Rodriguez and Lee Strock, and brought together over 190 attendees. These included students from Boston College, City University of New York, Duke, Yale, Penn State and others, as well as activists and community members from the Boston area.

 Read the full article here.

Harvard Law School Lambda, the law school’s LGBT student organization, will host its third annual Harvard Lambda Legal Advocacy (HaLLA) conference Feb. 29-March 1. This year’s conference will focus on transgender legal issues.

Lee Strock, one of the conference organizers, said that while the conference should appeal to anyone interested in LGBT advocacy, it will be of particular interest to attorneys and law students.

“This is absolutely cutting edge in the legal world, and it’s also something that doesn’t get enough attention in LGBT advocacy,” said Strock.

Read the full article here.

The Court’s opinion is a disappointment.The opinion concentrates on the technicalities and logistics of on-campus recruiting in order to avoid deciding thornier free speech issues. The Court asserts that law schools are not forced to adopt the military’s message through on-campus recruiting and thus suffer no harm to their free speech rights, yet the opinion studiously avoids discussing the harm to free speech brought about when law schools are compelled to invalidate and render meaningless non-discrimination policies meant to protect their students. These policies are not empty words that can freely be ignored, but an expression of law schools’ commitment to equality - not only for gay and lesbian students, but for students of all races, religions, genders, and nationalities.

While the Court’s opinion is a setback, it should do nothing to change law schools’ commitments to protecting their students from discrimination. Unless University administrators are content with having the law school’s non-discrimination policy be rendered meaningless for the indefinite future, they will be proactive in exercising their free speech rights and working to develop new strategies for combating discrimination on campus.

Ultimately, the heart of this issue is not the Solomon Amendment itself, but rather another law, a law wrong on both a moral and pragmatic level. The military’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy excludes qualified gay and lesbian men and women from serving their country at a time when the nation may need them the most. Numerous opinion polls, by organizations ranging from Gallup to Fox News, have repeatedly shown that the majority of Americans believe “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” to be outdated and unwise. If the military truly wants to recruit the “best and brightest” students from the nation’s law schools, it would be better served to do away with its discriminatory hiring practices rather than compel law schools to accept them.

We believe the University should engage this wrong and throw its support behind bills such as the Military Readiness Enhancement Act, sponsored by Rep. Marty Meehan, D-Mass., and 109 co-sponsors, which would end the military’s discriminatory practices. If law schools cannot enforce non-discrimination inside their walls, they can work to end discrimination outside of them.

We hope the Supreme Court recognizes that the government is misapplying the Solomon Amendment and overstepping its authority. Not only is the government demanding that military recruiters be granted the special privilege to ignore non-discrimination policies meant to protect students, it is also coercing law schools into compliance by threatening funds that largely go to medical schools and schools of public health. The government has its priorities out of order. If it is truly interested in protecting the nation, it should spend less time trying to “send a message” to law schools by attaching unnecessary conditions to valuable medical research funds and instead focus on ending its discriminatory “Don’t Ask/Don’t Tell” policy. The government has failed to recognize what law schools have long known: discrimination against its gay and lesbian citizens is wrong and against its interests. If it wants to recruit the “best and the brightest,” the government should end its discriminatory policies and allow qualified gay men and women to join the ranks and serve their country with pride and dignity.