Court Opinion

ID: 9457342
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 20:19:00.25841+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:35:18.613281
License: Public Domain

SIMPSON, Circuit Judge,
with whom GOLDBERG, Circuit Judge, joins, dissenting :
I respectfully dissent from the Court’s failure to grant rehearing en banc.
It is my conviction that the Selective Service System Form for making application for conscientious objector status (Form 150) is patently and unreasonably misleading to most registrants. The inference is compelling that this is responsible for causing many registrants with valid CO claims (including the appellant Taylor) to forego applying for such status. The front page of Form 150 reads:
Section 6 (j) of the Military Selective Service Act of 1967 provides: “Nothing contained in this title shall be construed to require any person to be subject to combatant training and service in the Armed Forces of the United States, who, by reason of religious training and belief, is conscientiously opposed to participation in war in any form. As used in this subsection, the term ‘religious training and belief’ does not include essentially political, sociological, or philosophical views, or a merely personal moral code. Any person claiming exemption from combatant training and service because of such conscientious objections whose claim is sustained by the local board shall, if he is inducted into the Armed Forces under this title, be assigned to noncombatant service as defined by the President, or shall, if he is found to be conscientiously opposed to participation in such noncombatant service, in lieu of such induction, be ordered by his local board, subject to such regulations as the President may prescribe, to perform for a period equal to the period prescribed in section 4(b) such civilian work contributing to the maintenance of the national health, safety, or interest as the local board pursuant to Presidential regulations may deem appropriate and any such person who knowingly fails or neglects to obey any such order from his local board shall be deemed, for the purposes of section 12 of this title, to have knowingly failed or neglected to perform a duty required of him under this title.”
Most registrants are not lawyers. Without guidance “religious training and belief” must be understood by them to be used in the conventional sense, that is to say, in addition to belief in a Supreme Being, as including training and membership in and adherence to the beliefs of a formally constituted religious *356organization. What the forms fails to inform the registrant is that two United States Supreme Court opinions, United States v. Seeger, 1965, 380 U.S. 163, 85 S.Ct. 850, 13 L.Ed.2d 733, and Welsh v. United States, 1971, 398 U.S. 333, 90 S. Ct. 1792, 26 L.Ed.2d 308, have considerably enlarged on the conventional meaning of “religious training and belief”, and have held that in some circumstances deeply held personal beliefs not commonly thought of on the street as “religious” may qualify as “religious” within the meaning of the statute. Form 150 not only does not reveal this critical legal development to the layman registrant, but actually appears to indicate a precisely opposite meaning — that deeply held personal beliefs cannot be the basis for a CO claim. At its best, Form 150 is a half truth, and at worst, the information contained therein is clearly wrong. In many areas of the law we recognize that to neglect to reveal a material fact, in effect to tell a half truth, may be as misleading and as culpable as an outright lie. That doctrine fits this situation.
This is not at all to advocate that all court rulings relevant to the Selective Service System must be revealed literally in the forms used. But the information contained on the front cover of Form 150 has been a deceptively misleading half truth since Seeger came down, for more than five years. The average registrant may not be expected to keep abreast of Supreme Court rulings. Moreover, the entire emphasis of the Selective Service System at this stage of the process, i. e. classification, is nonlegal. Registrants are not allowed to have legal counsel in attendance at a personal appearance before the local board when requesting a classification. Registrants are informed that if they have any recognizable legal problems, that the board has a legal advisor who will consult with the registrant upon request. The attitude projected is “you don’t need a lawyer because you’re in good hands with your square-shooting local Selective Service Board.” Further, young registrants, typically age 18 to 26, at least to any significant extent do not have the financial resources to employ lawyers to keep them informed as to recent and relevant Selective Service rulings. For these reasons I would hold the Selective Service System to a strong affirmative obligation of frankness and candor regarding the state of applicable law in its dealings with registrants. Any other standard seems to me shocking in its callousness.
It is a legitimate deduction that the retention of the outdated information on Form 150 nullifies in large part the effect of Seeger and Welsh. This result may be that intended by high officials of the Selective Service System, but it is unnecessary to speculate in this respect. The adverse effect on such registrants as Jape Holley Taylor is the same whether caused by negligence or deliberate deception.
The average registrant whose contemplated CO application is based on other than traditional religious grounds may be expected to study the form uncritically, give the word “religious” its common every day connotation involving organized religion and conclude that he does not qualify for CO status. He is unlikely (and should not reasonably be expected) to research the law to determine whether “religious” has any hidden meaning. Only too late, after he refuses induction, is charged criminally and is provided with counsel, does he learn that he may have had a valid CO claim from the beginning. See for example what happened to Taylor, even though he counselled with his college professor father. People of this sort are not criminals. Instead they are the innocent victims of outdated procedural forms.
This ease is not an isolated instance. In the past few months this Court has been faced with similar problems created by misinformation given to a registrant by his draft board or its clerk. See, e. g., Edwards v. Selective Service Local Board No. 111, 5 Cir. 1970, 432 F.2d 287, *357United States v. Bagley, 5 Cir. 1970, 436 F.2d 55. McGee v. United States, 401 U.S. 479, 91 S.Ct. 1565, 29 L.Ed.2d 47 is not at variance with these sentiments. In McGee the Court was faced with a non-cooperating registrant who refused to fill out forms, and declared that he would not cooperate with the local board. By contrast, in Taylor, Edwards, supra, and similar misinformation cases we have cooperative registrants willing to work with local boards to receive the classification to which the law entitles them, who instead find themselves thwarted in that effort by misleading advice from the Selective Service System itself.
There is no indication in the record in this case that Taylor’s beliefs are not sincerely held sufficiently to qualify for conscientious objector status under Walsh and Seeger. His conviction is allowed to stand, however, because he did not timely assert his CO claim. The blame for this tragic set of circumstances should fall squarely on officials of the Selective Service System. I would like to see a holding that the unreasonable actions of the Selective Service System denied to Jape Holley Taylor that due process of law to which he was constitutionally entitled. This conviction should not stand.