Judge Issues Stay Against Brandon's Vaccine Mandate for Navy Seals: "There Is No Military Exclusion for the Constitution"

In other words, the Constitution does not stop functioning just because you happen to be defending it.

A federal judge granted a temporary injunction Monday against a federal vaccine mandate for Navy SEALs, who sued President Biden because they were seeking a religious exemption.

Judge Reed O'Connor, the U.S. District Court Judge for the Northern District of Texas, issued the stay in response to a lawsuit filed by First Liberty Institute in November on behalf of 35 active-duty SEALs and three reservists seeking a religious exemption, as first reported by Fox News Digital.

"The Navy service members in this case seek to vindicate the very freedoms they have sacrificed so much to protect. The COVID-19 pandemic provides the government no license to abrogate those freedoms. There is no COVID-19 exception to the First Amendment," O'Connor wrote in his ruling. "There is no military exclusion from our Constitution."

The SEALs represented in the lawsuit were all members of various Christian denominations and objected to the vaccine mandate based on "their sincerely held religious beliefs," claiming the military was violating their constitutional rights.

"We are aware of the injunction and are reviewing it," said Pentagon spokesman John Kirby.

I noted in a post last week that while the military is legally required to evaluate religious-exemption requests on an individual case-by-case basis, it has denied all of the requests submitted with identical form letters.

A commenter asked if that would help make the case that Brandon was acting illegally. The judge seems to have noticed: "The Navy provides a religious accommodation process but by all accounts, it is theater."

Religious exemptions to the vaccine requirement are virtually non-existent. In the past seven years, the Navy has not granted a religious exemption to any vaccine requirement.

...

To adjudicate a religious accommodation request, the Navy uses a six-phase, fifty-step process. See Supp. Decl. of Andrew Stephens, Ex. 1, ECF No. 62. Although "all requests for accommodation of religious practices are assessed on a case-by-case basis," Phase 1 of the Navy guidance document instructs an administrator to update a prepared disapproval template with the requester's name and rank. Based on this boilerplate rejection, Plaintiffs believe that this process is "pre-determined" and sidesteps the individualized review required by law.

...

As explained below, the record indicates the denial of each request is predetermined. As a result, Plaintiffs need not wait for the Navy to engage in an empty formality. In addition, whether the vaccine mandate violates Plaintiffs' First Amendment rights is a legal question well suited for the courts, not the Navy's administrative process. The Court finds that exhaustion is futile and will
not provide complete relief, and therefore the case is justiciable.

...

The facts overwhelmingly indicate that the Navy will deny the religious accommodations. The Navy has denied twenty-nine of Plaintiffs' thirty-five accommodations requests. Outside of Plaintiffs' requests, the Navy has, to date, never granted a religious accommodation request for the COVID-19 vaccine. In fact, in the past seven years, the Navy has never granted a single religious exemption for any vaccine. Several Plaintiffs have been directly told by their chains of command that "the senior leadership of Naval Special Warfare has no patience or tolerance for service members who refuse COVID-19 vaccination for religious reasons and wants them out of the SEAL community."

The Navy's accommodation process confirms those fears. The Navy uses a fifty-step process to adjudicate religious accommodation requests. Under the standard operating procedures for the process, the first fifteen steps require an administrator to update a prepared disapproval template with the requester’s name and rank. In essence, the Plaintiffs' requests are denied the moment they begin. That prepared letter is then sent to seven offices for review. After those offices review the disapproval letter, the administrator packages the letter with other religious accommodation requests for final signature. The administrator then prepares an internal memo to Vice Admiral John Nowell, asking him to "sign . . . letters disapproving immunization waiver requests based on sincerely held religious beliefs."

Then, at step thirty-five of the process, the administrator is told--for the first time--to read through the religious accommodation request. At that point, the disapproval letter has already been written, the religious accommodation request and related documents has already been reviewed by several offices, the disapproval has already been packaged with similar requests, and an internal memo has already been drafted requesting that Vice Admiral Nowell disapprove the religious
accommodation request.

Note, however, that analysis goes to justiciability, whether or not the court can decide this issue or not. The Navy says no, you may not, because we've not reached a final decision on these cases; the court says, be serious, you made your decision at step one of the supposedly "fifty step process." Actually, at step zero-- you have a blanket policy of rejecting all requests and pretending you evaluated them.

Then the court goes on to evaluate under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, and finds they'd likely win on the merits.

As I've mentioned before: This is another front in Brandon's attempt to purge the military of anyone who might be a Trump voter. They're using vaccine hesitancy as a proxy for Trump-voting.

They want their Wehrmacht to be politically pure. There can't be any questions in the ranks about obeying orders, even if those orders involve targeting the civilian population and political dissidents.

posted by Ace at 01:21 PM

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