(KCEN) -- Four servicewomen are suing the Department of Defense to end the ban on women serving in combat.
The women laid out their case in San Francisco today alongside lawyers from the American Civil Liberties Union.
They're calling for an end to the military's Combat Exclusion Policy, which prohibits the armed services from assigning women to infantry or units engaged in direct ground combat.
They call it discrimination by the federal government and unrealistic, saying modern warfare already puts women in the line of fire.
Captain Zoe Bedell, who is in the Marine Corps Reserves, said, "The modern battlefield means that there's no front line and there's no safe areas. Any time a woman or any service member sets foot into Iraq or Afghanistan they are serving in a combat zone."
A Pentagon spokesman told reporters that Defense Secretary Leon Panetta remained, "Very committed to examining the expansion of roles for women in the U.S. Military and he's done so."
The spokesman pointed to more than 14,000 positions made available to women since Panetta took over the Pentagon, calling those openings the beginning, not the end of a process.
