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When the military comes to your local high
school, you have a legal right to give students an opposing
view.
This has been the position taken by
federal district courts in Florida, Pennsylvania and
Illinois and two federal appellate courts. The most
broadly-worded decision came from a case that COMD took to
the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in the 1980s. Here is the
background:
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Until 1986, COMD was named the San Diego
Committee Against Registration and the Draft (CARD). In
1983, CARD attempted to place anti-draft registration ads in
numerous high school newspapers around San Diego County.
Student journalists at most of the schools published the
ads, but administrators in the Grossmont Union H.S. District
banned the ads from all of its student newspapers. San Diego
CARD felt it was the students’ right to decide the issue,
but since they weren’t going to be given that right, we
filed a lawsuit against the Grossmont district in federal
district court, citing violations of our First and
Fourteenth Amendment rights. We requested a preliminary
injunction from the court to suspend the ad ban while we
waited to see if a trial would be necessary. The district
court judge in San Diego refused to issue the preliminary
injunction and we appealed his decision.
On June 6, 1986, the Ninth Circuit Court
of Appeals issued a ruling stating that there was a
substantial likelihood that San Diego CARD would have
prevailed on the merits of its claim, and therefore the
district court judge should have issued a preliminary
injunction against Grossmont.
After the Ninth Circuit issued its
decision, the U.S. military attempted to convince the
appellate court to rehear the case and accept the Pentagon
as a co-defendant alongside the school district. The
military’s goal was to ensure San Diego CARD’s defeat by
applying the vast legal resources of the U.S. government. If
this strategy succeeded, any decision unfavorable to the
military could then be appealed to the conservative justices
of the U.S. Supreme Court.
Fortunately, the military’s motion to
intervene in the case was turned down by the Ninth Circuit
and the rehearing was denied. This left intact a major legal
precedent that can be used by counter-militarism activists
to demand the same opportunity to address students in public
schools that is granted to recruiters and the Selective
Service System.
Basically, the Ninth Circuit stated that
the question of military service (whether voluntary or
compulsory) is a controversial political issue, and if a
school establishes a forum for one side to present its views
on the issue, it must give opponents equal access to the
forum (download the text of the ruling in
PDF file format).
While the ruling has a direct legal effect
in only the nine Western states within the boundaries of the
Ninth Circuit, it can be used in other regions to help
persuade noncooperative school districts to grant equal
access to counter-recruitment activists. There have been
other similar, though less encompassing, rulings in the
Eleventh Circuit (Southeast U.S.) and in several cases
decided at the federal district court level in Illinois,
Pennsylvania and Florida. In some situations, citing these
other cases can also help (contact
COMD for details).
Some examples of what counter-recruitment
activists have been able to do in schools as a result of
these court cases include:
- placing literature displays in
career and counseling centers
- setting up displays at career and
college fairs
- placing posters and literature on
bulletin boards
- having speakers and printed
materials in classrooms
- running ads in student newspapers
There have also been successful efforts to
counter the military’s access to student directory
information (phone numbers and addresses).
One very useful resource for activists is
a 41-page report, "Using Equal Access to Counter
Militarism in High Schools," produced by the Project on
Youth and Non-Military Opportunities (Project YANO). To
order it, send $6.25 to Project YANO, P.O. Box 230157,
Encinitas, CA 92023. For their complete list of
educational/organizing resources, visit
www.projectyano.org |
