(Maj. Margaret Witt)

In what appears to be a reprimand of the military’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy, The U.S. Court of Appeals has stated that the military cannot automatically discharge people because they’re gay. The case was for a decorated flight nurse, Maj. Margaret Witt, who sued the Air Force over her dismissal.

The court ruled that the Air Force must prove that her dismissal furthered the military’s goals of troop readiness and unit cohesion. The ruling led opponents of the policy to declare its days numbered. It is also the first appeals court ruling in the country that evaluated the policy through the lens of a 2003 Supreme Court decision that struck down a Texas ban on sodomy as an unconstitutional intrusion on privacy.

In the past, when gay military members sued over their dismissals, courts historically accepted the military’s argument that having gays in the service is generally bad for morale and can lead to sexual tension. But the Supreme Court’s opinion in the Texas case changed the legal landscape, the judges said, and requires more scrutiny over whether “don’t ask, don’t tell” is constitutional as applied in individual cases.

Under Wednesday’s ruling, military officials “need to prove that having this particular gay person in the unit really hurts morale, and the only way to improve morale is to discharge this person,” said Aaron Caplan, a staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union of Washington state who worked on the case.

Witt, a flight nurse based at McChord Air Force Base near Tacoma, was suspended without pay in 2004 after the Air Force received a tip that she had been in a long-term relationship with a civilian woman. Witt was honorably discharged in October 2007 after having put in 18 years —

two short of what she needed to receive retirement benefits.

Source: FoxNews