[Peace-discuss] females always loose in military

[Dlind49 at aol.com]

Ex - Female Combat Pilot Can't Sue Critics
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
 
Filed at 4:57 a.m. ET

WASHINGTON (AP) -- A federal appeals court says one of the Navy's first 
female combat pilots cannot sue groups that questioned her qualifications to fly 
F-14 aircraft.

Former Navy Lt. Carey D. Lohrenz sued the Center for Military Readiness, an 
advocacy group that opposed women serving in combat, and two media outlets 
seven years ago. She said they ruined her Navy career by alleging she was not 
capable of flying F-14s.

But a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit 
ruled that Lohrenz lost some of her privacy protections when she became one of 
the first two female naval combat aviators.

``Lt. Lohrenz was not just any fighter pilot,'' Judge Judith W. Rogers wrote 
for the panel. ``When she 'suited up,' she could reasonably have been expected 
to know that she was assuming a position of 'special prominence' in the 
controversy about women in combat roles.''

The panel also determined that although the reports may well have been 
inaccurate, Lohrenz did not prove that reporters acted with malice, a necessary 
hurdle for public figures claiming defamation.

``It's disappointing, because it seems like such a technicality to me,'' 
Lohrenz told The Washington Post. ``The truth has been rendered here irrelevant.''

Lt. Kara Hultgreen, the other female combat pilot, died while attempting to 
land her F-14 on an aircraft carrier in October 1994. After that, Elaine 
Donnelly, the president of the Center for Military Readiness, alleged that the Navy 
knew Hultgreen and Lohrenz were substandard pilots.

Her reports, which were reported by the Copley Press and News World 
Communications Inc., claimed that the Pentagon used a ``politically driven'' double 
standard to help them qualify for pilot duty.

Kent Masterson Brown, Donnelly's attorney, called the decision a victory for 
free speech. ``There needs to be a lot of room for people to debate whether 
the military is making sure the people it puts into these jets are the most 
qualified,'' Brown said.

Before Donnelly's early 1995 reports, Lohrenz was rated an above-average 
pilot. However, she later received average marks and lost her flight status on 
F-14s.