LOS ANGELES – A federal judge in California said on Thursday that the US military’s ban on openly gay service members violated the constitution, the most recent in a string of court rulings overturning restrictions on the rights of the country’s gay men and lesbians.
US District Judge Virginia Phillips said the government’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy was a violation of due process and First Amendment rights. Instead of being necessary for military readiness, she said, the policy had a “direct and deleterious effect” on the armed services.
Citing testimony at a two-week trial in July by experts and former service members, Phillips wrote: “All of these examples demonstrate that the act’s restrictions on speech not only are broader than reasonably necessary to protect the government’s substantial interests, but also actually serve to impede military readiness and unit cohesion rather than further these goals.” She granted a request for an injunction to stop the military from discharging openly gay service members, but allowed the government time to appeal.
Phillips’s decision is likely to put more pressure on Congress to act on pending legislation that would repeal the policy, which forbids the military from asking about a service member’s sexual orientation but retains a ban on gays serving openly. The House voted in May to repeal the act, but the legislation is stalled in the Senate.
Meanwhile, even though President Barack Obama supports the repeal, his Justice Department defended the law before Phillips. Defense Secretary Robert Gates has said he believed Congress should not implement a repeal until the military first completes a study on how to integrate gay men and lesbians into the ranks.
The ruling comes just over a month after US District Judge Vaughn Walker in San Francisco said California’s voter-approved ban on same-sex marriage was unconstitutional. – (Washington Post/Bloombergservice)