Supreme Court
Agrees To Hear
Draft Sign-Up Case
The U.S. Supreme Court agreed last week to decide whether the federal government violated the constitutional rights of vocal opponents of draft registration by singling them out for prosecution for failure to register.
The case, Wayte v. United States (Case No. 83-1292), involves the indictment of a former Yale University student from Pasadena, Calif., for failure to register after he wrote to the Selective Service System vowing “never” to sign up.
In November 1982, a federal dis-trict judge agreed that David A. Wayte, now 22 years old, was the victim of “selective prosecution” and dismissed the government’s charges against him. (See Education Week, Nov. 24, 1982.) The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit overturned that decision and reinstated the indictment last July.
Although it has prevailed in the Wayte case so far, the Justice Department urged the Court to consider the case in order to resolve the conflict. The Court will hear arguments in the case after the opening of its next session in October.
Armed Forces Plan
To Stop Accepting
Additional Recruits
The armed forces plan to stop accepting recruits sometime in mid-June and for the remainder of fiscal year 1984 because their enlistment quotas will be full, the Defense Department has announced.
Department officials also noted that not since the end of World War II have so many high-school graduates selected to enter the military, according to a report in The New York Times. In the first half of this fiscal year, which ended March 31, 93 percent of all recruits had completed high school, compared with 89 percent in the same period last year and 68 percent in 1980.
Department officials interviewed for the article said the military has been enlisting more and better qualified men and women than in previous years because the services offer job opportunities and wages that compare favorably with those in the civilian labor market.
But the reason for signing up cited most often by recent enlistees was their inability to find satisfying jobs, even as high-school graduates.
