Navy blocked from acting against 35 COVID vaccine refusers

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WASHINGTON – A national justice successful Texas has granted a preliminary injunction stopping the Navy from acting against 35 sailors for refusing connected spiritual grounds to comply with an bid to get vaccinated against COVID-19.

The injunction is simply a caller situation to Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin's determination to marque vaccinations mandatory for each members of the military. The vaccination request allows for exemptions connected spiritual and different grounds, but nary of the thousands of requests for spiritual waivers truthful acold person been granted.

There was nary denotation that the bid would impact work members beyond the 35 sailors who sued Austin and the Navy. The Pentagon had nary contiguous effect to a petition for comment.

Well implicit 90% of the subject has been afloat vaccinated against COVID-19, including astatine slightest 98.5% of progressive and reserve members of the Navy. Austin asserts that vaccines are a valid and indispensable aesculapian request to support work members and their families and guarantee the combat readiness of the force.

In his determination Monday, U.S. District Judge Reed O'Connor wrote that the Navy's process for considering a sailor's petition for a spiritual exemption is flawed and amounts to “theater.”

O'Connor, who was appointed by President George W. Bush, wrote that the radical of 35 sailors who sued the authorities successful November and sought a preliminary injunction against the Navy person a close connected spiritual and First Amendment grounds to garbage the vaccination order.

“The Navy servicemembers successful this lawsuit question to vindicate the precise freedoms they person sacrificed truthful overmuch to protect,” O'Connor wrote. “The Covid-19 pandemic provides the authorities nary licence to abrogate those freedoms. There is nary COVID-19 objection to the First Amendment. There is nary subject exclusion from our Constitution.”

The O'Connor injunction was archetypal reported by The Washington Post.

Without commenting connected the lawsuit successful Texas, Pentagon spokesperson John Kirby past period defended the validity of the subject service's processes for considering spiritual exemptions.

“Each exemption asked for connected spiritual grounds is evaluated by a chaplain, by a concatenation of command, by aesculapian experts and is fixed rather a batch of thought, and they’re each decided lawsuit by lawsuit individually,” helium said Dec. 21.

In his determination successful favour of the injunction sought by the 35 Navy sailors, O'Connor wrote that they objected to being vaccinated connected 4 grounds: "opposition to termination and the usage of aborted fetal compartment lines successful improvement of the vaccine; content that modifying one’s assemblage is an affront to the Creator; divine acquisition not to person the vaccine, and absorption to injecting hint amounts of carnal cells into one’s body."

“Plaintiffs’ beliefs astir the vaccine are undisputedly sincere, and it is not the relation of this tribunal to find their truthfulness oregon accuracy,” the justice wrote.

The sailors who sued are members of the Naval Special Warfare Command, including SEALs. The suit was filed by First Liberty Institute, a nonprofit that focuses connected defending spiritual liberty.

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AP writer Eric Tucker contributed to this report.

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