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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State ex rel. Drouhard v. Morrow County Board of Commissioners

Citation: 2020-Ohio-4160

Opinion Date: August 25, 2020

Judge: DeWine

Areas of Law: Government & Administrative Law

The Supreme Court denied a writ of prohibition to prevent the three members of a board of county commissioners from going forward with a show-cause hearing to consider the removal of a member of the board of trustees of the county hospital, holding that the commissioners did not patently and unambiguously lack jurisdiction to proceed with the show-cause hearing. The Morrow County Board of Commissioners claimed that the authority to appoint and remove members of the Morrow County Hospital Board of Trustees was a five-member body, with each commissioner having one vote. Patrick Drouhard, the chairman of the Board of Trustees, claimed that the appointing authority was a three-member body, with the board of commissioners having a single collective vote and the other votes belonging to the judges of the Morrow County Court of Common Pleas. When the Commissioners sought to schedule a show-cause hearing to remove Drouhard as chairman of the Hospital Board Drouhard filed this complaint for a writ of prohibition. The Supreme Court denied the writ, holding (1) the three commissioners constitute the majority of the appointing authority that is empowered by law to remove a member of the county hospital board; and (2) Drouhard possessed an adequate remedy by way of an appeal following the show-cause hearing.