US House didn't pass bill automatically registering men aged 18-26 for draft

Every year, the U.S. military needs a new budget and Congress is in charge of writing the check. On June 14, 2024, the U.S. House of Representatives passed H.R. 8070, the National Defense Authorization Act for 2025.

In the version of the bill the House proposed, one particular item has repeatedly stood out to numerous people online: that the bill would automatically register all males between the ages of 18 and 26 in the Selective Service System — or, in more common terms, the military draft.

For example, in late October 2025, one TikTok user posted a video with overlaid text reading: "BREAKING: U.SMILITARY DRAFT BILIJUST PASSED October 21, 2025." In the footage, the narrator said: "Yesterday, June 14th, 2024, the House of Representatives passed a defense bill that will automatically register young men ages 18 through 26 for the U.S. draft."

The original House version of the bill did contain a provision that would automatically register all eligible men with the Selective Service:

Except as otherwise provided in this title, every male citizen of the United States, and every other male person residing in the United States, between the ages of eighteen and twenty-six, shall be automatically registered under this Act by the Director of the Selective Service System.

However, that provision was removed from the final version of the bill, H.R.5009, that was signed into law on Dec. 23, 2024. Therefore, we have rated this claim as outdated.

Social media posts indicated that multiple people were confused about exactly what all this meant, so here's what you need to know about the legislation.

'Registering For Draft' Isn't the Same Thing as 'Getting Drafted'

Under current U.S. law, anyone who was born a man and is currently aged 18 up to and including 25 is eligible and required to register for the draft. Once you turn 26, you are out of the draft. 

The U.S. military has not used that list of names to call people up for military service (i.e., drafted them) since the Vietnam War, but in the case that a draft is reinstated, the U.S. needs a list of everyone eligible for service to determine who will actually be called to serve. That list is maintained by the Selective Service System and theoretically contains every man eligible for service, between the ages of 18 and up to and including 25. When you register for the draft, you put your name on the U.S. government's list. That's it. 

After the military officially became a volunteer-only service in 1973, the draft was unlikely to be used again. Since the 1970s, the U.S. has maintained the Selective Service System and the draft list as a "break-glass-in-case-of-emergency" situation.

Although nobody has been criminally punished for not registering since the 1980s, registering for the draft is a good idea. A law called the Thurmond Amendment, for instance, spells out that an eligible person must be registered for the draft in order to work for the government. In addition, many states still require eligible people to register in order to take out state-based student loans (this used to be required for federal loans as well, but that law was repealed in 2021).

Given that most states automatically register men for the draft when they apply for a driver's license, the now-dropped provision in the bill could have been viewed as an effort to streamline the registration process by automating it on a national level instead of relying on a state-by-state basis.

Provision didn't make it into the final law

A brief Civics 101 refresher: In order for a bill to become a law, the majority of members in both the House of Representatives and the Senate must vote "yea" on the proposed legislation and then the president must sign it. In the case of H.R. 8070, only one of those things happened.

The H.R. 8070 version of the bill that the Republican-controlled House passed on June 14, 2024, was chock-full of amendments likely to stop it from passing the Senate, controlled by the Democrats at the time, including bans on the money being used to provide abortion and gender-affirming care through the military's healthcare system, rollbacks on climate change protections and dismantling diversity, equity and inclusion programs. 

The Senate Armed Services Committee approved a different version of the bill, but according to reporting from Politico in June 2024, it was unclear, at the time, when the whole Senate would vote on that version. The H.R. 5009 version eventually passed the Senate with an amendment by Voice Vote on Sept. 24, 2024. Former President Joe Biden signed it into law on Dec. 23 that year.

In the end, according to a January 2025 non-partisan Congressional Research Service report, the automatic registration provision did not end up in the H.R. 5009 version that was signed into law. It read: "The enacted legislation does not include a provision for automatic registration, nor did it include a requirement for women to register."

A few users online added a separate, but related claim: That under this bill, women would become eligible for the draft, as well. This is an idea that's been floated for decades. While there was a provision in the Senate's version of the bill that would require women to register for the draft, it too was removed from the final bill signed into law, as shown in the above quote.