Defending Veterans’ Rights for Over a Century

The ACLU marks this Veterans Day with a continued commitment to advancing the rights of veterans, servicemembers, and their families. We have a long, proud history of litigation and advocacy on behalf of those who serve, as reflected in a new report released today.

Our commitment to the fundamental freedoms of veterans, servicemembers, and their families is unwavering. Military life in many ways can mirror civil society, often making explicit the segregation, discrimination, and other indignities of the time. By breaking down barriers in the military, we ensure that those who serve their country are treated fairly. And, in doing so, we challenge the assumptions that undergird similar forms of unfairness in civilian life as well.

Dissent and Discrimination: Early Battles for Equality and Justice in the Military

In 1917, as the United States prepared to enter World War I, Congress passed the Selective Service Act requiring men to register for the draft and leaving few avenues to object based on sincerely held religious beliefs.

Around the same time, Roger Nash Baldwin founded the National Civil Liberties Bureau to protect the rights of war dissenters and conscientious objectors. That organization soon became the ACLU, and our defense of war opponents helped cement the ACLU’s reputation as a champion of liberty for both civilians and service members.

From the 1940s to the 1970s, the ACLU took on some of the most consequential cases affecting veterans and servicemembers. In 1942, the ACLU represented Winfred Lynn, a Black man, who responded to his draft notice by defiantly stating that he was “ready to serve in any unit of the armed forces of my country which is not segregated by race.” This case was a contributing factor in President Harry Truman's 1948 executive order ending racial segregation in the military.

Thirty years later, we fought to uphold the rights of pregnant servicemembers, , most notably in the landmark case of Struck v. Secretary of Defense, which challenged the Air Force policy requiring people in the service who were pregnant to have an abortion or be discharged. The case forced the Air Force to change its policy.

At the same time, in the 1970s, the ACLU also represented a gay servicemember in his attempt to serve openly and pursued changes to allow women to serve on equal terms as men in the armed forces.

These battles, some of which made it all the way to the Supreme Court, helped break down gender and race barriers in the military. Ruth Bader Ginsburg, as a founding director of the ACLU Women’s Rights Project, was one of the key legal minds advancing these and other fights on behalf of women during the 1970s.

Beyond Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell: Veterans’ and Servicemembers’ Civil Liberties in the Modern Era

Throughout the latter half of the 20th century, the ACLU also attended to the needs of veterans, addressing inequities in the military’s discharge system. In the 1970s, our Veterans Education Project published the “ACLU Practice Manual on Military Discharge Upgrading,” and we launched a national telephone hotline to connect veterans with assistance to upgrade their discharges.

Today, fights over who has the right to serve continue. We fought Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, which banned lesbian, gay, and bisexual troops from serving openly in the military until it was repealed in 2010. We also worked to expand access to military academies for women and parents, represented military whistleblowers like Chelsea Manning, and defended the free speech and voting rights of servicemembers and veterans when they came under threat.

Under the first Trump administration, servicemembers and veterans faced an onslaught of attacks. Cruelly, the Trump White House banned transgender people from serving in the military, regardless of their ability and willingness to serve. We filed suit on behalf of affected servicemembers who were discharged based on their gender identity, and saw the ban lifted. Trump recently reinstated the ban.

When the first Trump administration sought to undermine the expedited pathway to citizenship for immigrants who served, we sued. Our advocacy in support of veteran-led organizing has helped bring as many as 175 deported veterans back home.

But as far as we’ve come, there’s still work to do. Black people, other people of color, women, and additional marginalized communities are still underrepresented in military academies and officer ranks. Transgender people are now excluded altogether from service. Veterans are still subject to deportation despite their service, and those who remain in our country face disproportionate rates of homelessness and incarceration.

Just as these inequities persist, so does our dedication to demanding better. The ACLU is in courts in Congress to fight for a military that reflects our country’s values of fairness, equality, and justice.

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