A federal judge ruled Monday that the Navy cannot force members with religious objections to COVID-19 vaccines to take them, so long as the exemption process remains “by all accounts…theater.”
“Our nation asks the men and women in our military to serve, suffer, and sacrifice. But we do not ask them to lay aside their citizenry and give up the very rights they have sworn to protect,” U.S. District Judge Reed O’Connor wrote in approving a preliminary injunction against the mandate as applied to the 35 service members who sued.
“Every president since the signing of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act has praised the men and women of the military for their bravery and service in protecting the freedoms this country guarantees,” O’Connor said.
“The Navy has not granted a religious exemption to any vaccine in recent memory. It merely rubber stamps each denial,” the judge continued. “There is no COVID-19 exception to the First Amendment. There is no military exclusion from our Constitution.”
As reported by Just the News, while the military claims the courts must wait for it to decide every religious exemption request, it has already denied 29, O’Connor wrote. Each denial is “predetermined,” so service members don’t have to wait for the Navy to “engage in an empty formality.”
Even if the Navy granted a religious exemption, recipients would still be "medically disqualified" and therefore "permanently barred from deployment, denied the bonuses and incentive pay that accompany deployment, and deprived of the very reason they chose to serve in the Navy," O'Connor wrote.
Those who receive medical accommodations, on the other hand, "receive equal status as those who are vaccinated."
O’Connor cited testimony from some service members who were told "they would lose their SEAL Tridents" while others would lose them "merely for requesting the exemption."
O'Connor said the record "overwhelmingly demonstrates that the Navy’s religious accommodation process is an exercise in futility. Plaintiffs need not wait for the Navy to rubber stamp a constitutional violation before seeking relief in court."
The judge also prohibited the military from "taking any adverse action against Plaintiffs on the basis of Plaintiffs’ requests for religious accommodation."
