THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, December 4, 1994 TAG: 9412040085
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B5 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: RICHMOND LENGTH: Medium: 59 lines
A federal appeals panel has upheld a ruling allowing The Citadel to close its veterans day-school program, an action three female veterans said the school took to keep them from joining.
A three-judge panel of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said Friday in Richmond that the state-supported military college's decision to end the program was permanent and ``not simply a step temporarily undertaken to avoid the risk of litigation.''
Patricia M. Johnson, Elizabeth A. Lacey, and Angela C. Chapman sought to attend day classes in 1992 at the Charleston, S.C., school with male veterans and cadets. The Citadel's evening College of Graduate and Professional Studies is open to women, but the evening courses are inferior to the day program, said Sara Mendelbaum, a lawyer representing the women.
When the women were rejected, in June 1992, they sued the college. The Citadel ended the veterans program three months later. Day classes are currently open only to the all-male corps of cadets and Navy and Marine enlisted men.
The women contended The Citadel continues to admit men to its day classes through other programs not open to veterans. The three did not seek re-establishment of the veterans program, but wanted The Citadel to admit them as special day students.
U.S. District Judge C. Weston Houck of Charleston, S.C., rejected their claims, and the federal appeals panel said that after the college abolished the veterans program, any litigation became moot.
``Once The Citadel terminated the veterans program entirely and permanently, the relief for admission to it could not be granted, and without a program, the discrimination claimed to exist in the admissions policy of the program also ended,'' the panel said.
Concurring in the opinion were Judges Kenneth K. Hall of West Virginia, Paul V. Niemeyer of Maryland and Clyde H. Hamilton of South Carolina.
Johnson told The (Charleston, S.C.) Post and Courier on Friday that she had not seen the opinion yet, but was prepared to appeal the decision to the U.S. Supreme Court.
``I'll have to wait until my attorneys say whether or not to appeal,'' she said. ``I'd like to see it through all the way. I can't see going through all that I've gone through for the last three years and let it go now.''
Virginia Military Institute in Lexington and The Citadel are the only two state-supported, single-sex schools in the nation. Both are being sued over their male-only admissions policies.
``Our efforts to pursue our single-gender status are strengthened as a result of the ruling,'' Citadel spokesman Rick Mill said Friday.
Currently, Shannon R. Faulkner is attending day classes at The Citadel while the school appeals an order from Houck to admit her to the corps of cadets.
KEYWORDS: WOMEN IN THE MILITARY by CNB