WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court confronts a gay-rights issue tomorrow, in a case that asks whether law schools can bar military recruiters because of the Pentagon's "don't ask, don't tell" policy.

Each fall recruiters of all types jam law schools seeking top students in job fairs, receptions and interview sessions.

Justices will decide whether universities that accept government money must accommodate the military even if the schools forbid the participation of recruiters from public agencies and private companies that have discriminatory policies.

It is the first time that the Court has dealt with a gay-rights related case since the contentious 2003 ruling in Lawrence v. Texas that struck down laws criminalizing gay sex. In 2000, the Court ruled in Boy Scouts of America v. Dale that the Boy Scouts have the right to ban leaders who are openly gay.

The latest appeal pits the Pentagon against a group of law schools and professors. The justices hear arguments in Rumsfeld v. Forum for Academic and Institutional Rights, 04-1152, tomorrow.

The government contends that if it provides financial support to a college — with grants for research, for example — then in exchange it should be able to recruit "the very students whose education it has supported." In this case, that means having the ability to recruit students, a tool made more essential since the Sept. 11 attacks.

Federal financial support of colleges tops $35 billion a year.

Law schools say they would welcome military recruiters if the Pentagon dropped its policy against openly gay personnel. Gay men and women may serve only if they keep their sexual orientation to themselves.

The outcome turns on the First Amendment and whether schools can be made to associate with military recruiters or promote their appearances on campus.

"Part of the cultural meaning of the case is bound up in questions about gay rights," said Cornell Law School professor Trevor Morrison, a former clerk to Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. "Indirectly, it's about the `don't ask, don't tell policy.'"

The Supreme Court often splits 5-4 in free-speech cases, so it is hard to predict the outcome, as well as how the impending retirement of Justice Sandra Day O'Connor may affect the case.

If Samuel Alito, President Bush's nominee to succeed O'Connor, is confirmed by the Senate before the case is decided, then Alito could be called on to break any tie vote. The ruling will likely take months to complete.

Alito, who worked as a lawyer for the Reagan administration, probably would be sympathetic to the government's arguments that college access is necessary to fill military jobs, Morrison said.

O'Connor has been a moderate in gay-rights cases, voting in 2003 to prevent states from making the private sexual conduct of gays a crime. Justice Antonin Scalia wrote a blistering dissent, saying that the Court had "largely signed on to the so-called homosexual agenda."

A federal law, known as the Solomon Amendment, mandates that universities, including their law and medical schools and other branches, give the military the same access as other recruiters or forfeit public money.

Congress passed the Solomon Amendment in 1994, the same year that lawmakers approved the "don't ask, don't tell" policy.

"In order to recruit the most talented men and women into the armed services, the military must be able to recruit students on college and university campuses, just as other employers do," justices were told in a filing by Paul Clement, the Bush administration's top Supreme Court lawyer.

The law had been contested by law schools that have policies that prevent on-campus recruiting by organizations that base hiring on race, gender or sexual orientation.

Justices were told in a filing for Harvard University, which six of the current nine Court members attended, and other leading colleges that the case would "threaten grave damage to the integrity and independence of the nation's universities."

A split panel of the Philadelphia-based 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals found that it was reasonably likely that the law violated free-speech rights. Just as the Boy Scouts have a right to exclude gays based on a First Amendment right of expression, law schools also may bar groups they consider discriminatory, the 3rd Circuit said.

Alito serves on that appeals court but was not involved in the case.