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A New Legal Development Allows Draft Registration to Continue
From Draft NOtices, October-December 2020
A New Legal Development Allows Draft Registration to Continue
— Rick Jahnkow
In 1981, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that male-only draft registration did not constitute gender discrimination because, at that time, women were excluded from military combat roles. In February 2020, a federal district court judge in Texas ruled that because women were no longer excluded from combat, the system of draft registration that only had consequences for males had become a form of unconstitutional gender discrimination. That judge’s ruling was subsequently appealed by the government to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.