Two Yale Law School (YLS) student groups filed suit against the Department of Defense in U.S. District Court in New Haven yesterday to bar military recruiters from the school’s official job fairs.

The Pentagon’s insistence that it be included in a YLS-sanctioned recruiting event at New Haven’s Holiday Inn violates students’ First and Fifth Amendment rights, according to the complaint, which was filed jointly by the Student/Faculty Alliance for Military Equality (SAME) and YLS OutLaws, two campus civil rights groups.

The suit is the latest in a series of legal challenges to the 1995 Solomon Amendment, which allows the Pentagon to block federal funding for universities that limit military recruiters’ access to students.

If successful, the suit may provide a legal road map for students at Harvard Law School (HLS), who were counseled against filing their own suit by HLS professors who felt they did not have a strong enough case.

Opponents of the amendment at Yale claim that the law conflicts with the schools’ nondiscrimination policies, which require that recruiters treat applicants and employees equally with regard to sexual orientation. The military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy requires the discharge of openly gay individuals.

A majority of the YLS faculty filed a similar suit on Oct. 17, and a group of University of Pennsylvania law professors and students filed a complaint in U.S. District Court in Philadelphia earlier this month.

Those two suits came just weeks after a broad coalition of law schools and professors, calling itself the Forum for Academic and Institutional Rights (FAIR), filed a challenge to the Solomon Amendment in a U.S. District Court in Newark.

H. Kent Greenfield, a Boston College law professor who is president of FAIR, praised YLS students for taking action but warned that the recent lawsuits could limit the success of FAIR’s legal effort.

Judge John C. Lifland, who is presiding over the FAIR litigation, has the authority to issue a nationwide injunction suspending the Solomon Amendment. But the YLS and Penn lawsuits will give judges in New Haven and Philadelphia the opportunity to issue rulings in conflict with a potential Lifland injunction.

Lifland was expected to issue his decision on FAIR’s motion for an injunction last Friday, but Pentagon lawyers filed a last-minute motion to delay the ruling, Greenfield said.

“I have been expecting a ruling all week,” said Greenfield. The delay is “consistent with our understanding that this judge is very thoughtful and thorough.”

Adam A. Sofen ’01, a second-year YLS students who is co-chair of OutLaws, defended his group’s decision to file suit separately from YLS faculty members and FAIR.

“Both students and faculty decided that it’s better to let a thousand flowers bloom: it could only be to the good to have more opportunities to challenge the Solomon Amendment in court,” said Sofen, a former Crimson editor.

While the District Court in New Haven is itself “a propitious place to file suit,” according to Sofen, “the legal case is so strong that it doesn’t matter” under which jurisdiction Solomon Amendment opponents litigate.

But HLS professors have advised Lambda, a law students’ civil rights group, that students have flimsy legal grounds for filing suit, according to second-year HLS student Amy R. Lawler, the group’s political co-chair.