Drafted and Shafted: Who Should Complain About Male-Only Registration?

SHERRY F. COLB

Cornell law professor comments on a recent opinion by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit holding that requiring men but not women to register for the draft is constitutional under mandatory U.S. Supreme Court precedents. Specifically, Colb considers what the U.S. Supreme Court should do if it agrees to hear the case and more narrowly, whether the motives of the plaintiffs in that case bear on how the case should come out.

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United States v. Abdalla

Docket: 19-5967

Opinion Date: August 27, 2020

Judge: Nalbandian

Areas of Law: Civil Rights, Constitutional Law, Criminal Law

The Tennessee Judicial Drug Task Force and the Drug Enforcement Administration investigated Abdalla for suspected narcotics trafficking. The Tennessee judge who signed the warrant permitting officers to search Abdalla’s residence on New Hope Road only had jurisdiction in DeKalb County but the warrant, in one place, listed an address on Carey Road in Trousdale County. This error resulted from the officer using a previous warrant as a template and failing to erase all vestiges of that document. Abdalla argued that a warrant cannot be valid if it contains a mismatch between the residence in the authorization section and the residence that the police searched and that a judge’s failure to notice an address outside his jurisdiction in a warrant’s authorization section demands the inference that the judge impermissibly rubber-stamped the warrant. The affidavit supporting the warrant listed the correct address and county at the top of the first page; the warrant itself directed officers to the correct address by providing step-by-step directions along with a detailed description of Abdalla’s residence. The Sixth Circuit affirmed the denial of a motion to suppress, Abdallah’s conviction as a felon in possession of a firearm, and his 168-month sentence. The warrant’s singular incorrect address posed almost no chance of a mistaken search. Despite the government’s irregular mistake, this clerical error case demands the usual result for technical mistakes that threaten no constitutional harm.