The Third Circuit panel is likely to rule on FAIR’s appeal of Lifland’s ruling in mid-March.

Lambda and the other groups represented by Gibbons set forth two arguments supporting FAIR’s standing claim in today’s brief.

First, the brief argues, “an association’s ability to maintain the confidentiality of its membership list is vital to preserving freedom of association.”

The argument dates back to the late 1950s, when the Supreme Court ruled that a civil rights group in Alabama could protect its members’ anonymity to shield them from retaliation at the hands of segregationists, Hafetz said.

“If the government can compel disclosure of FAIR’s members’ names, it will likely deal a fatal blow to any legal challenge to the Solomon Amendment,” according to today’s brief.

Second, the brief argues that the students who have signed on to the FAIR suit as plaintiffs have standing to challenge the Pentagon’s policy because “the Solomon Amendment has harmed their ability to receive the nondiscrimination message of their schools.”

Lifland ruled in November that law schools could convey their opposition to discrimination against gays even while accommodating a military presence on campus.

But the AALS, which so far “has been mostly silent about the case,” will argue in its brief that law schools are not able to counteract the harmful message sent by Pentagon recruiting, Greenfield said.

HLS officials did not return phone calls from The Crimson yesterday inquiring about the school’s involvement in the AALS brief.

Also today, a group of retired military officers will submit a friend-of-the-court brief telling the Third Circuit “that the military’s interest in this case is not sufficient or compelling.”

The brief will endorse FAIR’s claim that the Pentagon’s Office of the Judge Advocate General can attract enough attorneys without violating law schools’ nondiscrimination policies.

And a group of law school career services directors will file a fifth brief arguing that “recruiting has an important expressive component.”

Lifland, in his denial of FAIR’s motion for a preliminary injunction, treated recruitment as conduct, not speech, thereby taking it “out of the First Amendment rubric,” said E. Joshua Rosenkranz, an attorney representing FAIR, in an interview with The Crimson last week.

FAIR’s suit is one of a series of pending legal challenges to the Solomon Amendment. Law professors and students from Yale and the University of Pennsylvania already have filed suit.

A majority of the HLS faculty signed a letter in October urging Summers to join or initiate litigation, and some professors have indicated that they may soon file suit independently of the University administration.

—Staff writer Daniel. J. Hemel can be reached at hemel@fas.harvard.edu.