The Supreme Court on Monday declined to hear a constitutional challenge to the male-only registration requirement for the draft filed by a group called the National Coalition for Men.
The court’s order means that for now even though the draft is not implemented, only men will still be required to register for the selective service. Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Stephen Breyer and Brett Kavanaugh wrote to explain their vote noting that Congress may take up the issue in the short term. „At least for now,“ Sotomayor wrote, „the court’s longstanding deference to Congress on matters of national defense and military affairs cautions against granting review while Congress actively weighs the issue.“ The group had asked the justices to reconsider a 1981 decision that upheld the Military Selective Service Act under which men — but not women — are required to register for the draft. Key to the court’s ruling, which was decided by a court made up of all men, was its observation that „women as a group…unlike men as a group, are not eligible for combat.“ That has changed in the decades since. David Cole of the American Civil Liberties Union, which represented the National Coalition for Men, had asked the Supreme Court to take up the case — even highlighting what it might have meant to the justices‘ late colleague Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
