Judge sides with sailors refusing shot

WASHINGTON — A federal judge in Texas has granted a preliminary injunction stopping the Navy from acting against 35 sailors for refusing on religious grounds to comply with an order to get vaccinated against COVID-19.

The injunction is a new challenge to Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin’s decision to make vaccinations mandatory for all members of the military. The vaccination requirement allows for exemptions on religious and other grounds, but none of the thousands of requests for religious waivers so far have been granted.

There was no indication that the order would affect service members beyond the 35 sailors who sued Austin and the Navy.

Pentagon press secretary John

Kirby said officials are reviewing the injunction and are in discussion with the Department of Justice “as to what options might be available to us going forward.”

Well over 90 percent of the military has been fully vaccinated against COVID-19, including at least 98.5 percent of active and reserve members of the Navy.

In his decision Monday, U.S. District Judge Reed O’connor wrote that the Navy’s process for considering a sailor’s request for a religious exemption is flawed and amounts to “theater.”

O’connor wrote that the group of 35 sailors who sued the government in November and sought a preliminary injunction against the Navy have a right on religious and First Amendment grounds to refuse the vaccination order.

“The Navy service members in this case seek to vindicate the very freedoms they have sacrificed so much to protect,” O’connor wrote. “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.”