WASHINGTON -- Pentagon officials are considering new restrictions on service members' interactions with far-right groups, part of the military's reckoning with extremism, but the measures could trigger legal challenges from critics who say they would violate First Amendment rights.
Under a review launched by Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, Defense Department officials are reexamining rules governing troops' affiliations with anti-government and white supremacist movements, ties that currently are permissible in limited circumstances.
Austin, who has pledged zero tolerance for extremism, ordered the review after the events of Jan. 6, when rioters including a few dozen veterans -- and a handful of current service members -- stormed the U.S. Capitol in an attempt to overturn the presidential election results.
A newly formed extremism task force, which includes officials from across the Defense Department, has until July to make recommendations on potential changes to military justice, rules on extremism and related issues that apply to uniformed military personnel, the Coast Guard and Defense Department civilians.
One step the task force is examining would alter a regulation that prohibits troops' "active" participation in extremist organizations -- activities such as fundraising, attending rallies and distributing propaganda -- but permits what officials have called "passive" membership, which could include being admitted to groups or possessing their literature.
Officials said Austin, a retired general whom President Joe Biden appointed as the country's first Black head of the Pentagon, intends to ensure that the basic rights of military personnel are preserved.
"But keep in mind that we have also taken oaths, and we also have a set of values that we as a military and we as a department espouse," a senior defense official said. "And if that speech isn't in line with our values, then it makes it arguably impossible for that individual to be a good teammate and to be in line with the good order and discipline of units."
Current and former officials say Pentagon lawyers, also part of the task force, are likely to take a cautious approach in considering new restrictions on service members' First Amendment rights, especially in an area of the law that many experts characterize as untested.
Uniformed personnel already are subject to some limits on freedom of speech enjoyed by other Americans, on the basis of what courts have ruled is the vital mission of the military and the importance of order in the ranks. Service members can be tried in military courts, for example, for disrespecting senior officers, using indecent language or inciting others to abandon their duties.
Some activists argue that the prohibitions should be more sweeping because, in their view, even interactions with extremists in an online forum, for example, constitute active participation in a potentially violent movement.
But Michael Berry, a former Marine Corps lawyer who is general counsel at First Liberty, a group focused on religious freedom, cautioned that the Pentagon could be setting itself up for legal challenges.
"If you try to criminalize thoughts and beliefs, every defense attorney in the country is going to be doing cartwheels to try to line up clients," Berry said.
Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said troops would not be penalized for their beliefs.
"This is not about being the thought police. It's not about identifying you as an individual and what's in between your ears," he recently told reporters. "It's about what you do with what's between your ears. It's about the behavior and the conduct that is inspired by or influenced by this kind of ideology."
Information for this article was contributed by Julie Tate of The Washington Post.