Jacobrown v. Romo

In July 2009, we sued the Selective Service System on behalf of Tobin Jacobrown, a birthright Quaker who refused to register for the draft when he turned 18 because the System would not officially record his claim of conscientious objector status and he therefore believed that he would be counted by the government as a potential combatant, which violated his beliefs. We believed that the Religious Freedom Restoration Act required the System to accommodate Mr. Jacobrown’s beliefs by recording his conscientious-objector claim. But in February 2011, the district court found in that the Selective Service System would keep an official record of his conscientious-objector claim, even if not in the form he desired, and dismissed the case on the ground that he had failed to show harm. We did not appeal.