“All the recommendations from law professors have been that we don’t have legal standing,” Lawler said.

“We have basically written off [the option of filing suit] because we have had such a consensus from law professors,” he added.

But a lead lawyer in the YLS students’ suit said he disagreed with the HLS professors’ findings.

“The touchstone of standing is injury, and here—as the complaint lays out—the students are injured by the government’s policy,” said Carmine D. Boccuzzi, an attorney with the New York firm of Cleary, Gottlieb, Steen, Hamilton.

Lawler said she was hopeful that YLS students and their lawyers had found a new avenue for litigation.

Sofen said the YLS students “have two main categories for complaint.”

First, the students charge that YLS’s long-standing nondiscrimination policy, which requires recruiters who attend the Holiday Inn event to pledge equal treatment on the basis of sexual orientation, does not in fact violate the 1995 statute, since YLS offers opportunities and space for recruiters to meet with students at other times of the year.

“Yale always permitted the military to request meeting space on campus and to contact students directly,” Sofen said.

Second, the YLS students contend that the Solomon Amendment is itself unconstitutional.

According to the complaint, the amendment violates the students’ “First Amendment right not to endorse or associate with employers who reject the Law School’s non-discrimination policy and message.”

Moreover, the students argue, by forcing the law school to suspend its non-discrimination policy solely for lesbian and gay students, “the Solomon Amendment...violates plaintiffs’ right to due process and equal protection under the Fifth Amendment.”

The complaint also contends that the statute constitutes “viewpoint discrimination” because it allows law schools to bar military recruiters on religious or pacifist grounds, but not on principles of nondiscrimination.

The YLS faculty has also built its case on First and Fifth Amendment grounds. Professors and students have cooperated throughout the legal process, Sofen said.

The anti-Solomon Amendment effort “is a movement that is gaining force fast,” said Sofen. “I wouldn’t be surprised if we see more lawsuits like this in the next few months, including from Harvard students.”

Ivy League university administrations–with hundreds of millions of federal funds at stake—have been reluctant to come out publicly in opposition to the Solomon Amendment.