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With the U.S. military mired in a historic recruiting crisis, and global tensions at their highest point since World War II, now would be a good time to keep as many troops in uniform as possible. Unfortunately, the Biden administration’s reckless discharge of more than 75,000 military personnel in the name of compliance with vaccine mandates has weakened America’s force posture.
Just as seriously – especially given the uncertainties and risks surrounding the mandates – this mass purge of objectors treated service members with unjustified severity and failed to reasonably accommodate religiously-based objections.
With the advent of the Biden administration and the proliferation of COVID-19 vaccines in 2021, the federal government began mandating vaccines for federal employees. While federal courts struck down most federal mandates, those affecting U.S. service members were initially allowed to stand, since federal courts traditionally deferred to executive decisions concerning military affairs.
Sgt. 1st Class Demetrius Roberson administers a COVID-19 vaccine to a soldier on Sept. 9, 2021 in Fort Knox, Kentucky. (Jon Cherry/Getty Images)
Whether out of concerns for their health or religious conscience, many service members refused to get vaccinated. Tens of thousands of these individuals were subsequently discharged, and many more were denied pay or benefits.
DOD also forbade an unknown number – likely well into the tens of thousands – from reenlisting, thus forcing them into retirement. Surveys suggest that large numbers of potential recruits from the traditional recruiting grounds of the South and Midwest were also ineligible for service because of their desire to stay unvaccinated.
In an era in which biological agents may be used, the military must have latitude to require medical measures for its troops, but the mandates for COVID were ill-conceived and imposed with a heavy-handedness and rigidity not justified by the circumstances. Especially concerning was the short shrift given to U.S. troops’ religiously-based objections to the vaccinations.
Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin denied through adjudication or inaction 95% of the more than 45,000 requests for religious accommodation. It is hard to escape the conclusion that the administration’s harsh mandate policies, and expulsion of religious objectors, was part and parcel of its broader policy to remake the military into a more culturally woke institution and to identify and purge service members whose political or cultural views were not aligned with its own.
AMERICA OWES ITS TROOPS COMPENSATION FOR UNFAIR COVID VACCINE MANDATES
By the summer of 2022, it was obvious that the Pentagon’s vaccination mandate and left-wing ideology campaign had exacerbated a service-wide recruiting emergency. That’s the last thing the U.S. military can afford as dangers thicken and proliferate around the world.
Thankfully, federal courts intervened to uphold a religious exemption to vaccination. By August 2022, federal courts issued nationwide injunctions against the Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps for systematic religious discrimination in violation of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA). Courts were also poised to issue nationwide injunctions against the Army and Coast Guard in December 2022 when Congress terminated the mandates.
But by then the damage had already been done: Around 75,000 troops had been needlessly discharged, whether formally or through a downgrade to inactive status amounting to a de facto expulsion. Thousands more have been deprived of years of pay, promotions, separation pay, retirement points and pay, health care and educational benefits (including thousands forced to repay GI Bill benefits).
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Many of those expelled from the ranks are highly decorated veterans with multiple combat tours and deployments, midlevel officers and senior noncommissioned officers who form the backbone of the military, approximately 1,000-1,500 pilots, and myriad other key specialists.
Today, the hopes of redress for troops wrongly exiled or denied compensation rest largely on the outcomes of several putative class action lawsuits on behalf of service members winding their way through the Court of Federal Claims. Other lawsuits are likely to be filed in other federal courts.
But Americans should not depend exclusively on lawsuits to rectify the situation. Congress should pass legislation allowing for fast-track re-enlistment of the warriors we have lost the mandate discharges, as well as establish a mechanism to award financial compensation to those who have lost pay and benefits.
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Additionally, should President Trump return to the White House in 2025, supporting such legislation, or creating pathways within DOD to achieve these ends, would be a worthy task for his Defense secretary.
Either way, it is imperative we get our military house in order, enhance enlistments and move swiftly to demonstrate the fairness we owe our service members.
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