Extended GI duty targeted
In cases that could affect soldiers locally and across the nation, soldiers suing the military over involuntary extensions of their active duty service had a mixed day in court Friday: A U.S. Army Reserve captain won an honorable discharge in New York, but a California National Guard soldier, currently stationed at Washington’s Fort Lewis, had a request for a preliminary injunction tossed out by a federal judge in Sacramento.
“We are disappointed by the ruling,” said Joshua Sondheimer, a San Francisco attorney representing the Guard soldier, known in court papers only as John Doe. “We still believe the order that our client is being deployed under is an illegal order.”
Doe, who had previously seen combat in Iraq, joined the California National Guard in April under a one-year enlistment offered to veterans with previous active-duty service. He was told he would not be sent to Iraq during this enlistment, Sondheimer has said. Last month, Doe’s unit was mobilized for 545 days of active duty service in Operation Iraqi Freedom, sent to Fort Lewis for training and is expected to be deployed to Iraq on Nov. 20.
The soldier sued, contending the order would illegally extend his contract with the military beyond his end date of April 30, 2005. Friday, a federal judge denied Doe’s request for a preliminary injunction, ruling that the solder’s enlistment has not yet expired and thus Doe has not suffered irreparable harm, Sondheimer said.
“The court has suggested there is no harm done until his enlistment expires and the extension kicks in,” Sondheimer said. “But the court also said it will continue to rule on the merits of the case.”
No timetable has been set beyond a Nov. 22 deadline for the military to respond to Doe’s complaint.
The case challenging the military policy of “stop-loss” has caught the attention of soldiers across the country, Sondheimer said.
“There is lots of interest. We could make a full-time practice out of this if that was our inclination,” he said.
Stop-loss affects tens of thousands of soldiers across the nation as the military scrambles to find enough soldiers to fill slots in Iraq and Afghanistan. Sondheimer and attorney Michael Sorgen, who have represented two soldiers challenging the policy, say stop-loss only applies if Congress has declared war or a state of national emergency. Congress has done neither.
The military argues that the policy is needed for the cohesion of the units being sent overseas. Hundreds of soldiers in the Idaho National Guard’s 116th Brigade Combat Team faced a similar situation in August while training at Fort Bliss near El Paso, Texas.
Soldiers whose two-year active duty terms would expire before the 116th’s deployment to Iraq ended were asked to sign waivers. Most did. The brigade, including hundreds of soldiers from North Idaho, is expected to head overseas by the end of this month for a year’s deployment around the northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk.
In New York, meanwhile, a former Army Reserve captain won his court case. Jay Ferriola, 31, had resigned his commission in the reserve in June after completing eight years of military service. His commanding officer approved the resignation, a Reuters news story said, though Ferriola never received official confirmation.
He called his Oct. 8 deployment order a violation of his constitutional rights against “involuntary servitude” and a breach of his military contract. A federal judge in Manhattan agreed.
Critics have called the stop-loss policy a “back-door draft” and Sondheimer added: “This is a draft imposed in the most ironic way possible. You are drafting people who have already volunteered and done their duty. I ask your readers to consider if this is really a fair way to distribute the burden of meeting our military needs?”