Stop Loss: Is it legal?

via Progress Report: Dec. 6th, 2004
MILITARY – SOLDIERS SUE OVER STOP-LOSS

The New York Times reports eight U.S. soldiers currently serving in Iraq and Kuwait will file a lawsuit today in federal court in Washington "challenging the Army policy known as stop-loss." Marketed as a policy to "promote continuity within deployed units," the Army last spring mandated that "if a soldier's unit is still in Iraq or Afghanistan, that soldier cannot leave even when his or her enlistment time runs out. Since then, a handful of National Guardsmen who received orders to report for duty in California and Oregon have taken the policy to court, but the newest lawsuit is the first such challenge by a group of soldiers." The policy being challenged by the eight soldiers "has barred thousands of soldiers from leaving Iraq this year even though the terms of enlistment they signed up for have run out."