Ryan Bruce, a Marine Corps spokesman, told Military.com. A federal court in Ohio on Thursday blocked the Air Force from enforcing the militarys coronavirus vaccine mandate for two weeks, a short-term win for airmen fighting multiple legal battles against inoculation. Other federal court challenges to various COVID-19 vaccine mandates are ongoing. "I am proud of the efforts the Department of the Army has taken to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic," Wormuth said. In the Navy, none of more than 4,000 religious exemptions had been approved, but there were about 252 temporary and 11 permanent medical exemptions. Dr. Lee Merritt, a self-described Navy surgeon, stated during an . Lt. Col. Edward Stapanon, a Catholic instructor pilot at the 435th Fighter Training Squadron in Texas, said he requested retirement twice but was turned down because he hasnt finished out an extension of his active duty service commitment that ends in 2024. That includes protection from an adverse action while their exemptions are in process, a key part of the complaint, according to one of the attorneys on the lawsuit, which alleges that the plaintiffs have been removed from their jobs, flagged for promotion or otherwise hampered during the exemption process. Theyre not following federal law. A ruling in that case, issued this past November by the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati, upheld previous wins by attorneys representing the service members over the last year and took aim at the Air Force's process of approving religious exemptions. ), the Washington Post, and others. To date, no members of the Army or Space Force have received a religious exemption, though nine airmen and three Marines have been approved. Each of those shots also involves cell tissue derived from fetuses, as does one version of the rabies vaccine. The quickest vaccine ever developed was for mumps. Washington Technology Power Breakfast: Cyber Command planning intelligence center, TSP contractor promises more improvements, for other communicable diseases and infections, FOIA backlogs on the rise after record number of requests, Revived bills would alter feds payment obligations during shutdowns, federal first responders pensions, VA launches equity task force to address disparity in benefits decisions based on race, White House $1.6B COVID fraud plan gives federal watchdogs increased staffing, VA deputy secretary, leader on EHR rollout and customer experience, is stepping down. Religious freedom laws are set up to avoid a circumstance where the Navy, or the military or the government, is doing a faith test, to determine whether or not you really believe what youre supposed to believe, Griffin said. Nor do they mention the host of common medications that also use these stem cells, including Tylenol, Advil/Motrin, aspirin, Tums, Pepto Bismol, Benadryl, Sudafed and Claritin. More than 60 service members have joined lawsuits against the U.S. government, alleging that the militarys process for awarding religious vaccine exemptions is a sham. The lawsuit is one of two that have grabbed headlines in recent months, as the military has imposed mandatory vaccination deadlines that have since lapsed for all of the services and their components, save the Army National Guard and Army Reserve. The government burdens religion when it put[s] substantial pressure on an adherent to modify his behavior and to violate his beliefs.. We are kicking out people by the thousands. The military across the board is discriminating discriminating against people of faith. Mike Barry:Well, First Liberty Institute represents nine Air Force members who are challenging the Air Forces enforcement of its vaccine mandate. They will also have to make the case that vaccinating, or involuntarily discharging, every service member is the least restrictive means of keeping the force safe from COVID-19, rather than enforcing masking or social distancing or in some cases, grandfathering in troops who acquired some immunity after catching COVID-19. That means that this is quickly becoming a national security concern. On Jan. 10, the DOD officially rescinded its Aug. 24, 2021, and Nov. 30, 2021, memoranda mandating that all members of the U.S. military, including the National Guard and Ready Reserves, take the emergency use authorization COVID-19 shots or face discharge and other disciplinary measures. The Biden Administration has previously admitted that it is not the federal government's role to enforce vaccine mandates. And thats why this is a sham.Jared Serbu: The Air Force case is a putative class action. death from COVID-19 vaccines administered after the declaration ends would be addressed in court under tort law unless the COVID-19 vaccines are added to the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (VICP; 42 U.S.C. Subscribe on PodcastOne or Apple Podcasts. And, in fact, the Department of Defense allows medical exemptions and administrative exemptions from the vaccine. Its just such an inappropriate position for the government to be in.. And now people will be able to take the analysis Supreme Court used and say, Okay, the way that they analyzed this issue, that might give us some indication of how they would analyze other issues, right. The "rule" and the ways it will be fought 1:43:40 How to fight the NFA and its unconstitutional rule about barrel lengths. This disparity of treatment between medical and religious exemptions was constitutionally prohibited,OConnor said: As a brief preview, the vaccine mandate fails strict scrutiny. However, vaccine opponents note that commanders can still make decisions on how and whether to deploy unvaccinated troops, under a memo signed last month by Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin. The Florida case, in a 187-page complaint, takes measures much further. The story seems pretty similar to whats going on with these airmen. While vials contain the same formula, some have made the argument that because providers are still giving the emergency-use Pfizer version, no one can be compelled to get vaccinated until the Comirnaty-labeled vials are in circulation. Jared Serbu: Got it. I dont think that the precedent is going to be that big of one, Griffin, the former Coast Guard lawyer, said. And what if this is political ideology masquerading as as religious piety? Whats clear is that the COVID-19 has broken open a bit of a wormhole in the military. 1:51:01 Awkward Andrea Mitchell lectures MSNBC reporter about using term "pro-life" 2:09:32 Baby "chop shop" FOIA lawsuit. We are hemorrhaging people like crazy, and were having a really hard time recruiting capable people to join our military. Jared Serbu: Last thing, theres a lot of these vaccine cases, even just military vaccine cases floating around in various district courts and circuits the moment. They are, theyre ignoring the law, theyre ignoring the Constitution. The free exercise of religion, even in the military, it triggers the strongest protection available in the law.. I know, off the top of my head, the number in the Navy is somewhere near 4,100. Indeed, Defendants employed such measures during the prior year before COVID-19 vaccines were made widely available.. Please contact Susan Rushkowski at publicfiledc@hubbardradio.com or (202) 895-5027. The government has recently ordered imminent punitive action against those men and women of faith who cannot in good conscience take these experimental vaccines, and this order stops the government in its tracks, Adam Hochschild, a lawyer with the Thomas More Society and lead counsel in Air Force Officer v. Austin, said in a release. More:Dark money group targets Oklahoma Gov. The judge agreed, issuing an injunction against discipline for the sailors on Jan. 3. The Heritage Foundation, a petitioner in the case challenging the private-sector vaccine mandate,has asked the courtto invalidate the governments order. And lets start by talking a bit about your clients, where they are in the Air Force vaccine exemption process and what led you to file the suit? And I have yet to hear of a single flight being canceled because there was a COVID outbreak at 30,000 feet. Related: Navy Lifts COVID-19 Vaccine Requirement for Deployments. And so all of them have requested religious accommodations from the vaccine mandate, which is, of course, something that DoD regulations and even federal law, clearly permit and allow. More than 800 unvaccinated service members have been ousted from the Air Force so far. In December, the Air Force announced it had discharged 27 people for refusing to get the COVID . Were going from a 50-step process to a zero-step process? Duncan asked. It is not yet clear how the various services will handle pending lawsuits that sprang up in the years following the Pentagon's COVID-19 vaccine mandate. The policy does allow commanders to "implement Health Protection Measures at any time or manner deemed necessary in support of operational safety and effectiveness." The Texas case has smaller aspirations purposely, Berry said. Attorneys for the unvaccinated Navy personnel argued in briefs to the 5th Circuit that Austins memo and other Defense Department actions show that the Navy still intends to treat unvaccinated personnel like second-class citizens because of their religious beliefs.. And theyre discriminating against people in the military. Most of the plaintiffs express some sort of Christian faith, though the vast majority of denominations have no formal ban on vaccination. President Biden declared "the pandemic is over," yet is still pushing to discharge thousands of religious service members for their objections to taking the COVID-19 vaccine. The service members who filed the lawsuit represent more than 350 collective years of military service, and more than 100 combat deployments. . Researchers cultivate these cells for generations, using their derivatives to create or test all manner of pharmaceutical products. Judge Matthew McFarlands decision brings the case, Doster v. Kendall, closer to trial as a class-action lawsuit. The latest class action targets the Air Forces religious accommodation process, arguing that process is set up in such a way that getting a religious exemption to the vaccine is almost impossible. President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. condemned the mid-morning attack. This whole thing is really unprecedented, right? About 97% of the Department of the Air Force is fully vaccinated, though a larger share of active duty airmen and guardians have gotten the jab compared to their Guard and Reserve counterparts. They argue that their. You got a preliminary injunction in that case and a favorable ruling from the Fifth Circuit. Several lawsuits have been filed by sailors opposing the mandate and challenging the Navy's approach to reviewing the religious exemption requests. Are there major differences here? A federal judge granted a preliminary injunction on Monday blocking the Defense Department from taking action against a group of 35 Navy sailors who had refused to get a coronavirus vaccine,. If you want to swap with me, and they do that through the employer, or their employer offers that. "Marines will defer to Combatant Command policies regarding deployments.". WASHINGTON (AP) A bill to rescind the COVID-19 vaccine mandate for members of the U.S. military and provide nearly $858 billion for national defense passed the House on Thursday as. OConnor ruled that the blanket denial of their religious waiver requests amounted to a violation of the service members rights under the First Amendment andthe Religious Freedom Restoration Act. US Military To Face COVID-19 Vaccine Lawsuit February 18, 2023. The Texas lawsuit also states the plaintiffs are willing to continue to wear masks, social distance and take mandatory COVID-19 tests, rather than get vaccinated. Why is the DoD ignoring natural immunity when the CDC and other epidemiologists and medical experts have all generally agreed natural immunity is a real thing. Theres yet another lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the militarys COVID-19 vaccine mandate. Military leaders have long argued that to maintain unit health and troop readiness, troops have for decades been required to get as many as 17 vaccines, particularly those who are deploying overseas. Sixty-seven percent of the U.S. population is fully vaccinated. Those records are supposed to be cleared by March 31, according to the guidance. The Navy SEALS filed their lawsuit in November of 2021, describing what they saw as a cumbersome 50-step process to obtain religious exemptions for the COVID-19 vaccine. Jared Serbu: Yeah, theres a ton. The next stop in the litigation is likely to be an appeal by the Department of Defense and the Biden administration to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit. Yes, many of them have brought that and its a rubber stamp rejection, he said. Feb. 23, 2023. The NAVADMIN, referencing the injunction, prevents adverse action against sailors who will not get the COVID-19 vaccine and submitted a religious exemptions request. The complaint also brings up the issue of Food and Drug Administration licensure. WASHINGTON The Air Force has discharged 27 people for refusing to get the COVID-19 vaccine, making them what officials believe are the first service members to be removed for disobeying the. 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So I think that if one of these cases does end up in front of the Supreme Court, it will probably be addressed just on the narrow vaccine issue. What the government will have to prove, in both cases, is that while its granted thousands of medical and administrative exemptions though many of those are temporary that the high bar for approval of religious exemptions is necessary for keeping the force healthy and deployable. Commercial airlines has said, you know what, were gonna lift the mask mandate. Theyre not following their own regulations. Theres a case to be made for turning these lawsuits into class action matters, Staver said, so that individual service members dont have to sue or just another case. Rabies shots are required only for some service members in certain career fields. Two Eglin Air Force base officers are among the plaintiffs in a federal lawsuit challenging the COVID-19 vaccine mandate for U.S. military personnel. He has criticized the Air Force for what he sees as a failure to carefully consider the merits of each exemption request and instead sweepingly reject them. Government lawyers argue the policy is in line with well-established principles of judicial noninterference with core military decision making, in their briefs. Same thing on airplanes, right? The fetal cells were not used to produce either vaccine, National Geographic reported last fall. And to say, basically, no, you will do this because we said so and if you dont, were gonna kick you out. On Monday, Heather Hacker, an attorney for the Navy personnel, said the situation could be seen as worse now for them now that the older mandate policy has been rescinded, because current policy does not provide for a sailors religious objections to the vaccine to be considered when deployment or assignment decisions are made. VICP provides compensation for injuries and deaths caused by A vaccine lawsuit is filed in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims, instead of regular state or federal courts like other drug injury claims. Follow him on Twitter @TomNovelly. The Air Force number is probably in the same ballpark. The lawsuit, in which 14 men and two women serving in the military are named as plaintiffs, names U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, three U.S. military service secretaries and other. Sarah Parshall Perry is a senior legal fellow for the Edwin Meese III Center for Legal and Judicial Studies at The Heritage Foundation. "This vaccine mandate is unlawful and does not reflect the Land of the Free," said General O'Connor. Read Next: The Navy's Top Enlisted Sailor Is Ready for You to Ask Him Anything. The Texas lawsuit argues that the Navy Department is blanketly denying all religious requests, making the process a sham. Mondays arguments were heard by Duncan and Ho, both nominated to the 5th Circuit by President Donald Trump, and James Graves, a nominee of President Barack Obama. Its just under 4,100. Each week, Defense Reporter Jared Serbu speaks with the managers of the federal government's largest department. There is no military exclusion from our Constitution. Mike Barry: Probably not at the Supreme Court level. Many religious exemption applications have explained that the service members werent aware of the use of fetal stem cells prior to all of the controversy over the COVID-19 vaccine, but for the purposes of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, they dont have to explain themselves. Still, the organization said Covaxin is still a safe and effective product. Need help accessing the FCC Public File due to a disability? Law firms Latham & Watkins LLP Follow Siri & Glimstad LLP (Reuters) - The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, facing a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit seeking a vast trove of data. And they have different ranks, different different job responsibilities in the Air Force, a number of them are actually pilots in the Air Force. On Feb. 17, the service lifted its policy of banning unvaccinated sailors from deploying. And in some cases, according to some reports, its even more durable than the vaccine and you dont have to get boosters and things like that. How large is the class? Well, the good news is the law is set up so that the government actually can win those cases, when all they have to do is demonstrate that they have a compelling interest. 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The US military has approved religious exemptions to its Covid-19 vaccine mandate for 15 service members out of approximately 16,000 requests, according to the latest data from the services. On Friday, President Joe Biden signed the National Defense Authorization Act for fiscal year 2023, which repeals the COVID-19 vaccine mandate for service members. Essentially, while the Marines applied for exemptions on religious grounds, they were already entitled to a much more straightforward administrative exemption for troops soon to leave service or not currently with their units, which is likely the reason they were approved. "Former Soldiers may petition the Army Discharge Review Board and the Army Board for Correction of Military Records to request corrections to their records," the service's press release said. And they recognize that theres almost a presumption of belief. Overall, scientific evidence indicates that the benefits of vaccines largely . More than a dozen unidentified U.S. service members have filed a lawsuit seeking to overturn the Defense Department's COVID-19 vaccine order, saying they have natural immunity from. The Navy already denied these exemptions, but O'Connor. Kevin Stitt has pushed back on the COVID-19 vaccine mandate for the military that would apply to the Oklahoma National Guard. Circuit Court of Appeals panel that federal court injunctions against the mandate are still needed, in part because decisions on deployments and assignments can still be made based on vaccination status. Hes one of the attorneys representing the airmen challenging the mandate, and he spoke more to Jared Serbu on theFederal Drive with Tom Temin. Lawyers are waiting to see if a federal court in Georgia will stop the vaccine mandate nationwide through another class-action preliminary injunction as well. The plaintiffs argue that violates the Religious Freedom Restoration Act and the First Amendment. 26 Feb 2023 11:38:25 Punishing SEALs for simply asking for a religious accommodation is purely vindictive and punitive. The lawsuit filed by Air Force members and other federal employees claims that "the US Constitution and numerous federal laws make it unlawful to compel persons to be vaccinated." The plaintiffs. The first military COVID-19 vaccine mandate will take effect in November. Johnson & Johnson uses cells replicated from a fetus aborted in 1985 to produce its vaccine, but those cells are filtered out from the final product. Additionally, "promotion records will be corrected by the [Department of the Air Force] who will remove or redact all adverse actions related to vaccine refusal," according to a Friday press release. But there may be good reason for that. But in terms of the underlying legal issues that are raised, no, theyre exactly the same. And I havent heard of a single Starbucks shutting down. Im willing to go through that. And usually when somebody is willing to go through those measures, that demonstrates a degree of sincerity. The Army reported about 1,300 religious requests, none of which have been approved, as well as six medical exemptions. They have similar objections to their Texas counterparts, from opposition to abortion to concerns about modifying their bodies. The military's COVID-19 vaccine was repealed after the National Defense Authorization Act passed and was signed into law this month. Right? Pfizer Inc wants to intervene in a Texas federal lawsuit seeking information from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration used in licensing the company's COVID-19 vaccine, a litigation move that .