The Senate this week is considering legislation to strengthen the language of the Solomon Amendment, potentially dealing a setback to gay rights advocates who are challenging the 1996 statute.

Government lawyers have said that the Solomon Amendment allows the Pentagon to block federal funding to universities that limit military recruiters’ access to students.

According to Kevin Casey, Harvard’s senior director of federal and state relations, the University receives more than $400 million annually from Washington in research funds.

Harvard and a host of other universities have long insisted that only employers who pledge not to discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation can gain access to the schools’ official recruiting resources. But the Pentagon’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy requires the discharge of openly gay servicemembers, and military recruiters have refused to sign the University’s nondiscrimination pledge.

Harvard officials and government lawyers are involved in ongoing negotiations to resolve a dispute over conflicting interpretations of the Solomon Amendment. But the legislation before the Senate could clarify the 1996 statute’s ambiguous wording.

The current statute only allows the Pentagon to block funding for schools that prevent military recruiters “from gaining entry to campuses, or access to students.” The law does not stipulate that universities must grant recruiters “equal access.”

But tucked inside the massive National Defense Authorization Act, a $422 billion spending package being debated in the Senate this week, is a provision requiring schools to grant military recruiters “access to campuses and to students” that is “equal in quality and in scope to the degree...that is provided to any other employer.”

In March, the House voted 343-81 to pass legislation containing nearly identical language.

At that time, members of Congress, led by Rep. Christopher Cox, R-Calif., assailed Harvard’s policy towards military recruiters and ROTC.

“This bill...might as well be called the Harvard Act—because it squarely addresses the scandal of Harvard University and other schools banishing ROTC and military recruiters from campus,” said Cox, who holds both a law degree and an MBA from Harvard and briefly served on the Business School’s faculty in the early 1980s.

The House bill, H.R. 3966, was introduced by Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Ala. Under Rogers’ proposal, the secretary of defense could ask any school receiving federal funds to allow the Pentagon to establish a Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC) unit on campus. If the school refuses, the Pentagon could cut off nearly all federal funding to the university.

But despite resounding bipartisan support for the House measure, “only a small part of the House bill is currently included in the [Senate’s] defense department authorization bill,” said Sharra E. Greer, director of law and policy for the Servicemembers’ Legal Defense Network (SLDN), an organization that coordinates opposition to the Solomon Amendment and the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy.

A spokesperson for Rogers told The Crimson yesterday that “the House version contained some provisions—including ROTC certification—not included in the Senate version of the legislation.”

“This is a standard part of the legislative process and the two versions will be resolved when the bill goes to conference prior to final passage,” the spokesperson for Rogers said.

Cox is confident that some agreement can be reached so that the final version of the bill coming out of the House-Senate conference will look more like the original H.R. 3966, a spokesperson for the Harvard alum said yesterday.