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The landmark agreement could set a legal precedent for others who were punished, threatened, or forced to leave their career for refusing to take a shot in violation of their sincerely held beliefs.
After enduring a series of court challenges and losses, the Navy has agreed to review service members’ records if they were discharged for refusing to take the COVID-19 vaccine and will correct their records by removing disciplinary marks.
What started as a lawsuit filed by First Liberty Institute for 35 Navy SEALs who were denied religious accommodations from the Navy’s vaccine mandate later became a class-action lawsuit encompassing thousands of Navy personnel.
The military services received criticism regarding their religious accommodation approval processes. The Army received 4,238 exemption requests and approved 2. The Air Force denied 5,129 and approved 42. The Marines granted just 11 exemptions to 3,733 of its members who requested a religious exemption. And out of 3,352 requests, the Navy approved only 27, but those were all cases where the sailors were already planning to leave the service.
In January 2022, U.S. District Court Judge Reed O’Connor sided with the 35 Navy SEALs, writing,
“The Navy provides a religious accommodation process, but by all accounts, it is theater. The Navy has not granted a religious exemption to any vaccine in recent memory. It merely rubber stamps each denial…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.”
That ruling paved the way for the expansion of the lawsuit to include all members of a class of Navy servicemembers.
First Liberty announced the approval of a settlement between the Navy and the plaintiffs last week.
As part of the agreement, the Navy agreed to “re-review the personnel records of all Class Members to ensure that the U.S. Navy has permanently removed records indicating administrative separation processing or proceedings, formal counseling, and non-judicial punishment actions taken against the Class Member solely on the basis of non-compliance with the COVID-19 Mandate and adverse information related to non-compliance with the COVID-19 Mandate.”
Service members who left the service due to mistreatment regarding their refusal to take the vaccine will also have their records corrected.
The Navy also agreed that it would “post a statement affirming the Navy’s respect for religious service members, provide more training for commanders who review religious accommodation requests, revise a policy related to accommodation requests that was changed during the mandate, and pay $1.5 million in attorneys’ fees.”
Danielle Runyan, chair of the Military Practice Group and senior counsel at First Liberty, stated,
“This has been a long and difficult journey, but the Navy SEALs never gave up. We are thrilled that those members of the Navy who were guided by their conscience and steadfast in their faith will not be penalized in their Navy careers.”
Runyan told the Washington Examiner that the settlement could create a precedent for future religious freedom cases. “We’ve never had a class action situation against the military in the history of the military, and here we are. And because of that, the case law that we achieved, if people need to pursue relief in defense of their religious liberty rights going forward, they can rely on this.”
Retired Navy SEAL Drew Forsberg, a plaintiff in the suit, says he visited a Navy recruiter one week after 9/11 because he wanted to defend America on the frontlines. He became a SEAL and had served in the Navy for 19.5 years, just months from the point when he could receive a Navy pension, when the COVID vaccine mandate came down. He refused for religious reasons to take the shot, putting his career in jeopardy. Because of the lawsuit, Forsberg was able to remain in the Navy for 22 years but felt compelled to retire because of the hostile treatment he received over his stance on the vaccine.
He reacted to the legal win by saying,
“I’m excited about this mission accomplished…as SEALs we don’t win wars, we accomplish missions and we accomplished the mission of letting guys stay in and finish out their time in the Navy and leave on their own terms. I think there’s a lot to be done to hold those military officers accountable who [went after us] and I’m happy to join on the next lawsuit to go after those.”
The Biden administration imposed vaccine mandates on various groups of Americans. Perhaps no area demonstrates the authoritarian nature of those vaccine mandates better than those inflicted on the men and women serving in our military.
Our leaders told those brave men and women that their religious objections to the COVID vaccine didn’t matter. It told those who were uncomfortable with an untested vaccine that if they wanted to continue in the military they had to take the unproven treatment — or face severe consequences.
These military members who stood up for their constitutional freedoms were disciplined, threatened, denied promotions, or involuntarily separated from the military due to their opposition to the vaccine mandate. Some of those who remained unvaccinated were denied medical treatment for chronic injuries sustained in combat, while others were coerced into taking the shot against their beliefs and their will.
Over the years, numerous lawsuits were filed, but the military continued to push back despite numerous defeats in the court system. Now many of those military members have been vindicated and that is something to celebrate. Celebrate the brave members of the military who refused to take the vaccine and who joined in the lawsuit. Celebrate the members of First Liberty, Hacker Stephens LLP (which was also part of the class action suit), and others who represented them in court.
Yet the question has to be raised: How many soldiers, sailors, Marines, and airmen chose to end their military service, never to return to defending our nation? How many violated their own convictions by taking the vaccine? How many experienced unfair treatment and bad marks? How many took an untested vaccine that proved to be not only ineffective but may have harmed their health?
The federal government bears the blame for all of that.
The government cannot make citizens take an unproven vaccine. The government cannot demand a medical treatment with no accommodation for religious beliefs.
It’s not just the military where vaccine mandates have continually been slapped down.
Days after this settlement was announced, First Liberty released the news that the Third Circuit Court of Appeals had ruled in favor of another client, Rachel Spivack, who had been fired for refusing to take the COVID vaccine because of her Orthodox Jewish beliefs. Rachel was an assistant district attorney in Philadelphia and requested an accommodation. She waited seven months for a response and was denied even though others received accommodation because of medical reasons or union membership.
This serves as an important reminder to citizens: As an American, you have the right to religious freedom and you can — and must — demand that those rights be respected.
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