Committee Opposed to Militarism and the Draft (COMD)

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From Draft NOtices, October-December 2021

An Undiscussed Consequence of Expanded Draft Registration

— Rick Jahnkow

The most immediate danger of expanding draft registration to women is not, as some people think, an increased likelihood of a draft. The chance of that happening anytime in the near future continues to be remote. It wasn’t even on the table for serious government consideration after 9/11, or during the multiple U.S. troop deployments to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

A much more imminent danger is the actions that will be taken in schools to convince the female half of the 18-year-old population to join males in registering with Selective Service.

In the 1980s, we saw how relatively low rates of male draft registration in some parts of the country plagued Selective Service. The agency would issue press releases claiming that young men were overwhelmingly showing their patriotic willingness to submit their names and contact information for the sake of national readiness, but then the media would often report that actual numbers of registrants were below the stated expectations of Selective Service. The embarrassed draft agency had to come up with an excuse for the dearth of registration enthusiasm, and the best it could come up with was that there was a simple lack of awareness among young men. This was despite millions of dollars spent on Selective Service registration promotions and the enormous amount of media coverage devoted to the issue. And when the first registration resister trials were initiated to “send a message” about the risks of non-compliance, we learned in California that the state’s registration rate went down!

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From Draft NOtices, October-December 2021

Women Will Be Required to Register for the Military Draft

The U.S. Congress is in the final stages of approving changes to the Military Selective Service Act that would expand draft registration to include women. Language that would do this was inserted in the 2022 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) passed by the House of Representatives in September. An amendment that would have terminated draft registration and the Selective Service System was ruled out of order and, therefore, not debated or voted on.

The Senate will pass its version of the NDAA later in 2021. It is expected that it will contain the same expansion of registration to women. After going to a joint conference committee to resolve any House vs. Senate differences, the bill will go to President Biden for his signature. One year after the enactment of the NDAA, Biden would be authorized to issue an order to begin the registration of women. It could come as early as December 2022.

Some details are still unclear, such as exactly when the first women would have to begin registering with Selective Service. It has been speculated that it would most likely begin in 2023 with individuals who were born in 2005. This could be delayed if Selective Service needs more time to prepare to process the additional registrations. The process could begin with individual women registering on an ongoing basis as they turn 18, as is required of males, or it could be organized with a large-scale registration startup and deadline for an entire age group, as was done when male registration was restarted in 1980.

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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.

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Ninth CIRCUIT COURT RULING: CONFRONTING MILITARISM BY USING EQUAL ACCESS TO HIGH SCHOOLS

When the military comes to your local high school, you have a legal right to give students an opposing view. This has been the position taken by federal district courts in Florida, Pennsylvania and Illinois and two federal appellate courts. The most broadly-worded decision came from a case that COMD took to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in the 1980s. Here is the background:

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