Stop Loss "Back Door Draft" Challenges

San Francisco Law Firm Sues Rumsfeld

The office represents two decorated combat veterans serving in the Army Reserve in the first challenges to the Army’s current “stop loss” program, under which the reservists have been barred from leaving the military at the end of their enlistment terms and ordered to serve on active duty in Iraq. The reservists are identified as “John Doe” for reasons of privacy.

Under the stop loss program, the Army has prevented tens of thousands of soldiers from retiring or leaving the military upon completing their enlistment terms so that they may be deployed to or kept in Iraq. The petitions assert that the program is arbitrary, unfair, unauthorized by law, and in breach of the soldiers' standard enlistment contract. The stop loss program has been widely criticized as a “backdoor draft.”

Doe v. Rumsfeld (E.D. Cal.) http://www.sorgen.net/id19.htm