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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
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