USA: Verfassungsklage von Teenagerin, die sich diskriminiert fühlt, weil Zwangseinzug zum Militär nur Männer trifft

A New Jersey teenage girl has brought a federal class action against the Selective Service System, claiming its refusal to consider women for the draft is discriminatory.

"With both males and females available for such roles today, the two sexes are now similarly situated for draft registration purposes and there is no legitimate reason for the government to discriminate against the female class, so equal protection applies," the complaint states. "Further, with both males and females available for such combat roles, there is no reasonable basis for infringing the associational interests of the female class by preventing them from registering."

Professor Ilya Somin kommentiert in der Washington Post:

There is a chance that this case will end up being thrown out on procedural grounds. A court could potentially rule that women exempt from draft registration don’t have standing to sue because they don’t actually suffer any harm as a result (draft registration is usually considered a burden, not a benefit). This is one of the reasons why I thought a case would be more likely to be brought by men subject to draft registration than by women exempt from it. Also, a court might deny the plaintiff’s bid to certify the case as a class action on behalf other similarly situated women. But if the case does go forward, there is a real chance it will ultimately result in the invalidation of male-only draft registration.

To avoid misunderstanding, I should emphasize that I do not support either drafting women or forcing them to register for a possible future draft. But I also oppose drafting men. Conscription is both a severe infringement on individual liberty, and tends to reduce the quality of the military relative to an all volunteer armed forces. Ultimately, the best way to avoid conscripting women is to not have conscription – or draft registration – at all. By taking that step, we could simultaneously reduce the likelihood that the draft will be reimposed in the future and eliminate one of the last bastions of open sex discrimination in government policy. In my view, a decision striking down male-only draft registration is more likely to lead to abolition of draft registration altogether than to its extension to women.

Wenn sich die übliche Denkweise – "Frauen müssen vor Belastungen geschützt werden" – ausnahmsweise zu Gunsten von Männern auswirkt, soll das auch mir sehr recht sein.