The House of Representatives is considering a bill, H. 176, that would make Selective Service registration a condition to receive a driver’s license in Vermont. A young male’s name and contact information would automatically be forwarded to the Selective Service upon application for a license.
The bill has been considered before and rejected, and for good reason. Tying Selective Service registration to drivers’ license applications is a bad idea.
There is no rational connection between driving and Selective Service registration. Making the one conditional on the other is not only unfair but punitive.
Generally, government must have a rational basis for denying one group of citizens a benefit that is available to all other citizens, and it must provide a mechanism to contest the determination of the adverse action.
The bill, if passed, would result in blatant gender discrimination. Because draft registration only applies to males, the bill sets up a punishment that only applies to one gender.
There is an additional troubling aspect to H. 176. Article 9 of the Vermont Constitution states that a citizen who is “conscientiously scrupulous of bearing arms” cannot be compelled to render military service. Given such a prohibition, it seems unwise for the state to become involved in enforcing a federal law that could lead to the abrogation of this Vermont right.
The federal government has many tools with which to enforce conscription registration laws; the state should not become involved in the enforcement, especially when state civil rights are involved.
Finally, there is the issue of greater and greater state intrusion into Vermonters’ lives through the collection of personal information. Government is generally directed to collect and retain only the minimum information needed to carry out state services. However, the state is building bigger and bigger databases of personal information and making the data accessible to more and more agencies and organizations. This aggregation of data -- birth records, communicable disease records, medical records, prescription drug records, or Department of Motor Vehicle records -- chips away at Vermonters’ privacy.
Read the text of H. 176.
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