Draft Registration No Longer Required for College Aid in California
— Rick Jahnkow
California has now repealed its requirement that students comply with mandatory draft registration in order to be eligible for state-funded college financial aid. The repeal was accomplished via language added to an omnibus education funding bill, Senate Bill 169, that passed the state legislature with a unanimous vote on September 9, 2021. California Governor Gavin Newsom signed the bill into law two weeks later, on September 23.
The federal government’s own ban on student aid for non-registrants was repealed in a similar manner when the U.S. Congress passed an appropriations bill in December 2020. Language added to that legislation stated that “an individual shall not be ineligible” for federal financial aid because of a failure to register with Selective Service (H.R. 133, Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2021).
An analysis of SB 169 that was presented to the California legislature by its budget committee staff noted that the removal of the Selective Service registration requirement “aligns with” the changes enacted at the federal level. It is a key point that several activist groups in California were planning to make in a campaign to repeal the state law: i.e., why should there be a state financial aid ban on the books when the federal government had reversed its own position on the issue? As it turned out, the groups' budding campaign became unnecessary when it was learned that their goal was about to be accomplished through an initiative coming from within the California legislature’s budget committee.
This is no small development! The combined changes in the California and federal laws mean that students in the country’s most populous state will no longer have to worry that their failure to register for the draft (whether intentional or not) will eliminate the possibility of college for them. There will be a time lag in revising the federal financial aid application form (FAFSA), which is universally used to evaluate eligibility for aid, but colleges must already change their advice to students about draft registration and financial aid.
Unfortunately, many other states still have bans on not only financial aid, but other public benefits as well. For example, some states deny unregistered people the eligibility to even attend a public college, or to receive a driver’s license. All of this amounts to a system of coercion that has the greatest impact on youth in low-income communities. And soon, the number of victims of such nonjudicial punishments will greatly increase as the female population is required to register with Selective Service for the first time.
It is possible that the repeal of the federal and California financial aid bans may usher in a drop in draft registration rates, one that could become much more noticeable with campaigns for similar repeal legislation in other states. If this coincided with what might soon become a groundswell of resistance triggered by requiring women to register, it could significantly weaken the ability of Selective Service to carry out the basic task of conducting registration. That, in turn, would likely push more politicians toward supporting a goal that has so far not been feasible: complete termination of registration and the Selective Service System itself.
To learn about nonjudicial punishments applied to non-registrants in different states, visit https://centeronconscience.org/draft-registration-by-state/. For other additional information, visit resisters.info.
This article is from Draft NOtices, the newsletter of the Committee Opposed to Militarism and the Draft (http://www.comdsd.org/index.php/draft-notices).
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