A federal judge on Thursday temporarily blocked the Air Force from punishing a group of service members who are seeking a religious exemption to Covid-19 vaccinations.
The Moderna Covid-19 vaccine will be given to Gerald Allen at Osan Air Base in South Korea.
The Air Force was prevented from taking adverse action against a group of 18 service members after they filed a lawsuit against various Air Force officials.
At a previous hearing, three of the 18 people said they didn't want to bevaccinated because they didn't want to be associated with abortion.
In his order Thursday, he cast the issue in terms of religious freedom, and criticized the Air Force for putting the lawsuit in place.
The injunction does not affect the Air Force's ability to enforce its own vaccine policy, as the 18 service members who refused to be vaccinations were not part of the Air Force.
The Ohio Southern District Court has not scheduled any more hearings in the case.
The Air Force didn't respond to a request for comment about whether they would appeal the decision.
In August, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin announced that Covid vaccination would be mandatory for all service members to protect the readiness of the armed forces by discouraging the spread of disease. The Department of Defense's process for evaluating religious exemption requests weighs whether it is possible to accommodate a service member's religious practices as non-restrictively as possible while also maintaining the government's interest in keeping its military forces mission- ready. Air Force Surgeon General Robert I. Miller determined that there were no less restrictive ways to ensure readiness than vaccinations. Some of the applications were rejected because they would detract from the force's readiness by putting other service members at risk of disease. Some of the exemptions that have been granted were found to have no impact on missionary readiness, according to the lawsuit. According to his order, the Air Force approved only 23 religious exemption requests of 4,403, which is a.17% approval rate.
The lawsuits filed by groups of service members who claim their religious liberty has been violated have forced courts to examine how far they can go to regulate military commanders. Austin described the decision as an extraordinary and unprecedented intrusion into core military affairs. The Navy was not allowed to make deployment decisions on the basis of vaccine status again after three days.
The Air Force lawsuit may follow a similar path as the Navy lawsuit, which was delayed by differences of opinion between state and federal authorities, as well as the expansion of the case into a class action. If the Air Force lawsuit reaches the Supreme Court, it is possible that the court will favor the Air Force's right to penalize the Dissenting Service Members.
Few Air Force members have refused the vaccine. As of March 29, 98.1% of active service members were fully vaccine free, and 96.5% of all the branch's forces were fully vaccine free.
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