Go here to read the order granting the preliminary injunction.
Money quote:
1
UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
NORTHERN DISTRICT OF TEXAS
FORT WORTH DIVISION
U.S. NAVY SEALs 1–26, et al., §
§
Plaintiffs, §
§
v. § Civil Action No. 4:21–cv–01236–O
§
JOSEPH R. BIDEN, JR., et al., §
§
§
Defendants. §
ORDER ON PRELIMINARY INJUNCTION
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.1
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.2
In this case, members of the military seek protection under those very freedoms. Thirty–
five Navy Special Warfare servicemembers allege that the military’s mandatory vaccination policy
violates their religious freedoms under the First Amendment and Religious Freedom Restoration
Act. 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. The Navy servicemembers in this case seek to vindicate the very freedoms2
they have sacrificed so much to protect.3 The COVID–19 pandemic provides the government no
license to abrogate those freedoms. There is no COVID–19 exception to the First Amendment.
There is no military exclusion from our Constitution.
Doubtless this will be appealed by the Navy and presents ultimately the Supreme Court with a compelling challenge of vaccine mandates on religious freedom grounds.
The judiciary stuck their arrogant noses into matters of military discipline 30 years ago when a federal judge insisted that he and not the man’s superiors would determine if Volker Keith Meinhold was in violation of military discipline. I don’t like the authority of federal judges spreading all over the landscape like The Blob, but turnabout is fair play.
According to other court cases, it’s against the law for the military to mandate unapproved vaccines. The one that has been “approved” has been documented that it isn’t available.
Good in so far as it goes but I’m concerned with the reliance on an exemption on religious grounds. Is that ultimately the most solid foundation to rest upon, legally speaking? Seems that the exemptions should be framed in a much broader fashion, something akin to a natural law right not to have one’s bodily integrity compromised by threats and compulsion, nor to be compelled to lie, which in effect is being done when people are forced under threat of loss of livelihood, or dishonorable discharge, to sign a “consent” form which anyone who takes the shot will have to do. People have to lie as to the very act of pretending to consent when in truth they do not. Would a confession to a crime, signed under such circumstances be valid? Police and prosecutors have some leeway, but there are limits.