Court Opinion

ID: 9627621
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 08:48:48.051413+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:06:47.808656
License: Public Domain

ALDRICH, Senior Circuit Judge
(concurring).
Although I concur entirely in Judge Caffrey’s opinion, I think that Equal Protection as an independent ground for invalidating the statutory exclusion deserves more exposition. I agree with our dissenting brother that the test is simply whether there could be found a rational basis for distinguishing between C.O.’s who receive absolute discharges after performing the requisite minimum of service, and all other groups or classes that receive veteran’s benefits in spite of not completing their term, but I cannot agree with his conclusion. Briefly, the classifications are,
1. A serviceman who becomes a 1-0 conscientious objector, requests and receives an absolute discharge, 32 C.F.R. §§ 75.3(a)(1), 75.7(a) (1976), and cannot qualify under the Massachusetts statute.
2. A serviceman who becomes a 1-A-O conscientious objector, and requests a transfer to noncombatant service. 32 C.F.R. §§ 75.3(a)(2), 75.7(b) (1976). It is to be noted that this serviceman qualifies for Massachusetts benefits even if the Service chooses, as it may, to discharge him immediately, because in such event his papers will not be marked C.O.
3. A serviceman who is discharged for “unsuitability,” 32 C.F.R. § 41.7(g) (1976), and qualifies. Unsuitability includes alcohol abuse, aberrant sexual tendencies, unsanitary habits, financial irresponsibility, apathy, and defective attitudes.
While it has been suggested that all grounds listed under unsuitability are “beyond the serviceman’s control,” Jones, B. K., The Gravity of Administrative Discharges: A Legal and Empirical Evaluation, 59 Military L.Rev. 1, 4 (1973), I cannot but think that some of the above listed behavior and shortcomings involve a very considerable degree of voluntariness, if not willfulness. Certainly some seem no less voluntary than is the holding of conscientious objection to war.
I can attach no significance to the circumstance adverted to in the dissent, that the 1-0 serviceman who reports his condition to the Service initiates his discharge, while a serviceman who persists in, say, *655unsanitary habits, will be discharged without affirmatively requesting it. Other types of early discharge are initiated by the serviceman without incurring prejudice — it depends upon the circumstances. Given the depth of his beliefs and the opportunity to follow them, a 1-0 conscientious objector would necessarily take such a course. In suggesting that he might, instead, apply for noncombatant service, the dissent appears not to recognize that there are, in their beliefs, degrees of conscientious objection. A true 1-0, having a “firm, fixed and sincere objection to participation in war in any form. . . . ” 32 C.F.R. § 75.3(a), differs from a 1-A-O, and by hypothesis, could not conscientiously undertake 1-A-O duties. Thus he must ignore his conscience, or forego benefits.
I quite agree that a state, in rewarding service in the armed forces, is not obliged to be as generous, or all-inclusive, as is the federal government. However, it cannot be arbitrary as between individual citizens. I see no basis, when the requisite amount of service has been performed by each, for distinguishing, in the latter’s disfavor, between one who obtains a discharge by persisting in various forms of anti-social behavior and one who follows accepted views of conscientious belief.