Hartford, CT — A new exhibit and collection guide at the UConn Law Library documents the years-long legal battle of alumnus Joe Steffan, who sued the U.S. Department of Defense after being forced out of the U.S. Naval Academy for being gay.
Steffan, a 1994 graduate of UConn Law, donated his personal papers, legal filings, and correspondence, known as the Steffan Papers, to the Thomas J. Meskill Law Library. He said he wanted to preserve the documents for future study.
“I particularly wanted the correspondence (from other people sharing their own difficulties) to be preserved to bring context to the issue in future decades or centuries to help humanize the nature of what people faced,” he said.
Archivist Rebecca Altermatt curated the collection, spending nearly a year organizing 100 boxes of materials.
“I found the challenges he had to navigate still relevant today and envisioned an exhibit of the actual court documents, correspondence, and news media from the lawsuit,” she said. “We knew hearing from Joe himself would resonate with the students, as well as the greater law school community.”
Steffan’s case began in 1987 when, just weeks before graduating, he was investigated for being gay.
At the time, he held a top command rank at the academy and had earned all As in military performance, but those grades were changed to Fs based on the claim that a gay person was unfit for service.
“One of the things that really drove me to ultimately pursue this lawsuit was a profound sense of unfairness,” Steffan said.
“I had succeeded in all of the ways the Academy and the military wanted someone to succeed and yet something about me, that had no bearing on my performance, had disqualified me.”
With support from the Lambda Legal Defense Fund, he sued the Department of Defense.
His case moved between the district court and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, where a judge refused to recuse himself after using a slur to refer to Steffan.
The final ruling favored the Department of Defense in a 7-3 split along political lines.
