Judge Reed O’Connor of the Federal District Court in Fort Worth has issued a provisional injunction prohibiting the Navy from taking disciplinary action against its personnel, including 26 SEALs, while the proceedings are underway. Judge O’Connor said plaintiffs expressed religious opposition to the coronavirus vaccine that the Navy must respect.
The Biden administration filed an urgent application with the Supreme Court after three unanimous judges of the Federal Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit in New Orleans refused to block the ruling.
The government demanded only partial relief, saying it did not attempt to block some of the injunctions that protected plaintiffs from dismissal or disciplinary action. Instead, Secretary of Justice Elizabeth B. Prelogger told the judge to maintain “the Navy’s authority to decide which military personnel should be deployed to perform some of the military’s most sensitive and dangerous missions.” I asked.
Prelogger wrote that the injunction has already forced the Navy to send one of the plaintiffs to Hawaii for submarine missions, contrary to military judgment. In general, she said, “Navy personnel are ripe breeding grounds for respiratory illness, long-term routine in limited spaces where mitigation measures such as distance are unrealistic or impossible. I am active in. “
She said the military had long needed vaccination since 1777, when George Washington ordered smallpox to be vaccinated by the Continental Army. As of early 2021, she wrote that all service members needed nine vaccines.
In August, the Pentagon announced that it would add the coronavirus vaccine to the list. By the end of the year, more than 99 percent of active Navy personnel had been fully vaccinated.
However, all 35 military personnel assigned to the Navy’s Special Warfare Command refused, saying their religious beliefs prohibited vaccination against Covid-19. Judge O’Connor said, “Opposition to abortion and the use of aborted fetal cell lines in vaccine development,” “the belief that modifying one’s body is an aversion to the Creator,” and “directly the sacred vaccine. “Instruction not to inoculate” and “against injecting trace amounts of animal cells into the body”.
