Israel's Supreme Court Strikes Down Law Exempting Haredi Draft Dodgers

Israel's High Court of Justice unanimously nullified a law that had halted arrests of Haredi (ultra-Orthodox) men evading military conscription. The nine-judge panel ruled that the amendment, passed in July 2026, was fundamentally flawed in its legislative process and unconstitutional.

In the lead opinion, Acting Supreme Court President Noam Sohlberg, with the agreement of all justices, stated that the amendment significantly deviated from the original bill's subject matter as presented in its first reading. Consequently, the court determined the law effectively never passed its first reading, rendering its subsequent passage fatally flawed and necessitating its cancellation.

Furthermore, eight of the nine justices, excluding Justice D. Mintz, found the law unconstitutional on its merits, asserting it severely infringes upon the constitutional right to equality without meeting the conditions of the limitation clause. The law, passed with a vote of 58 to 54, was intended to suspend enforcement actions, investigations, and arrests against yeshiva students who had not enlisted for a period of five months.

The legislation included a mechanism for declarations and checks, along with a list of yeshivas to be determined by the Defense Minister, considering recommendations from the Yeshiva Committee and oversight from the Ministry of Education. The legal advisor to the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee had also sharply criticized the law, labeling it a "sectoral exemption" lacking a balancing mechanism to mitigate inequality and warning that such arrangements, without effective oversight or complementary sanctions, exacerbate constitutional difficulties.