Last week, the U.S. District Court for
the Northern District of Texas expanded the lawsuit – as well as the
preliminary injunction the court issued in January – to now prevent punishment
of any Navy personnel who (1) have religious objections to the Department of
Defense’s vaccine mandate and (2) have requested a religious accommodation from
the mandate.
In his decision, Judge Reed O’Connor stated:
“Here,
the potential class members have suffered the ‘same injury,’ arising from
violations of their constitutional rights. Each has submitted a religious accommodation
request, and each has had his request denied, delayed, or dismissed on appeal. Exactly zero requests have been granted. And while Defendants encourage this Court to
disregard the data, it is hard to imagine a more consistent display of
discrimination. As previously explained
in this Court’s preliminary injunction order, Plaintiffs have suffered the
serious injury of infringement of their religious liberty rights under RFRA and
the First Amendment.”
The original injunction was issued in favor of dozens of elite Navy SEALs. Mike Berry of First Liberty Institute (FLI) explains that from the get-go, his legal group hoped to support more than the roughly three dozen elite Navy personnel in the original lawsuit – and specifically asked O’Connor to allow that. “We knew early on that we wanted to expand the relief from just the 35 SEALs that we represent,” Berry tells American Family News. “We wanted to help as many people as we could. So, we submitted a motion to the judge asking him to expand this to a class action for the entire Navy – and that’s what he did.”
Berry, who is director of military affairs for FLI, says according to the latest data more than 4,000 sailors have requested religious exemptions from the vaccine mandate. “I think the law is in our favor – and the facts are in our favor … so I have a high degree of confidence,” the attorney shares. “I mean, no lawyer is ever going to tell you that they’re a hundred percent confident – but I feel as strongly about this case as I have about any other case that we have. We just need to make sure that the judges are also in our favor.”
Berry expects it will still be several months before the Fifth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rules on their case.
No comments:
Post a Comment