When Army Pfc. Tom Zinn heard his fellow reservists complain that they were old enough to fight but not old enough to drink, it never bothered him because he doesn't drink.

But when the 20-year-old Zeeland resident, who expects to be deployed to Iraq at any moment, wasn't able to get a hotel room in August because he was not 21, he got mad.

"This was more than a little inconvenience," said Zinn, who feels he was doing the responsible thing staying at a hotel instead of driving to Zeeland at 2 a.m. following an outing to a Tigers game with his longtime girlfriend, 18-year-old Theresa Taylor.

Now, the pair are being represented by the American Civil Liberties Union in a suit filed Wednesday in Wayne County Circuit Court, claiming the Holiday Inn Express of Downtown Detroit and another outlet in Birmingham violated the Michigan Civil Rights Act.

The Elliot-Larsen Civil Rights Act forbids discrimination in public accommodation based on age.

If a person is 18 and able to enter into a contract, they cannot legally be barred from checking into a hotel room based solely on age, said ACLU attorney Andrew Nickelhoff of Detroit.

"This is unusual because the typical age-discrimination case involved people who are older," Nickelhoff said. "But these are adults who are able to enter into a contract, and they shouldn't be discriminated against."

The suit calls for attorney fees and expenses as well as monetary damages of $1.

"We're not in this for the money," said Zinn, who is studying accounting at Davenport University. "We want this rule to be changed."

Taylor said the hotel's desk clerk told her the age rule was in place because people younger than 21 are more likely to party and cause disturbances.

Hours later -- after being told the same thing at many other Detroit area hotels -- they found a room at a Motel 6 in Farmington Hills, but they say they were lectured about how they would be tossed out if anyone complained.

"Kids must really be outrageous over there," said Taylor, who said she never had trouble renting hotel rooms in Ohio or West Michigan. "You can't go to Detroit because they won't let you sleep there."

Many area hotels, including West Michigan Holiday Inns, the Hilton and the Grand Rapids Inn say they won't allow anyone under 21 to check in. The Motel 6 on 28th Street SE in Kentwood allows anyone older than 18 to have a room.

The suit is filed against the South Dakota LLC, which owns the Detroit hotel and a limited partnership in Birmingham.

An attorney representing the hotel management company in South Dakota said he did not believe his client had been served with the suit and could not comment.

Holiday Inn corporate spokeswoman Natasha Gullett, based in Atlanta, was not sure if the age requirement is chain-wide or is a decision made by each hotel's management.

"There are age requirements because renting a hotel room comes with a lot of responsibility," Gullett said.

But Zinn and Taylor believe the hotels are acting irresponsibly by ignoring their civil rights. The Birmingham Holiday Inn turned them down on Aug. 4 and, a month ago, the downtown Detroit hotel refused to take a reservation from Taylor.

Zinn said he learned of the state's civil rights law on the Internet and Taylor's father, Dan Taylor, suggested they call the ACLU. The elder Taylor has been involved in other civil liberties controversies in Zeeland, including the school district's suspension of three high school students for wearing rock 'n' roll T-shirts in 1998, which he spoke against.

Taylor describes his daughter and her boyfriend as straight arrows who don't drink, use drugs or get in trouble.

"You've never seen such responsible kids," Dan Taylor said. "We support them 100 percent."

ACLU attorney Nickelhoff has represented other young people in civil rights cases. Last week, a Detroit federal court judge ruled that a Utica high school violated the First Amendment by censoring an article in the school newspaper written by the paper's student editor, represented by Nickelhoff.

And earlier this month, a federal judge in Detroit ruled that Nickelhoff's client, a Dearborn teenager prohibited from wearing a T-shirt with a picture of President Bush that read, "International Terrorist," must be allowed to wear the shirt to school.

"It serves an educational purpose for young people to know they have rights and that they can defend those rights," he said.