As previously reported, a US District Court has told the US Navy not to punish or discharge nearly three dozen SEALs and other operators who have religious objections to the COVID-19 vaccine. However, First Liberty Institute, representing those SEALs, says the Navy is continuing to mistreat the sailors in violation of the court’s order:

One of those included a service member, identified as “Navy SEAL 26,” who requested permission to travel to a program for traumatic brain injuries. According to the complaint, “multiple high-ranking Naval officers in SEAL 26’s command began calling the treatment center and asking if it would deny treatment to someone who is unvaccinated.”

It added that the treatment center wouldn’t comply but “the result is that the Navy ran out the clock on SEAL 26’s request again: the treatment center had to give his spot to another patient because SEAL 26 had not been given approval to attend.”

Within the rules of the military, this is arguably a common technique to take punitive action without actually taking action. The Navy can try to say, with some disingenuous sincerity, that according to its policies “no adverse action” was taken against the SEAL — because there was no official “action” taken. Worse, the sailors can’t “appeal” an administrative non-action, leaving them with no recourse.

In this case, however, the Navy is not beholden only to its own administrative liberties: A court ordered the Navy not to take “adverse action” against the SEALs in the lawsuit. If the court views the actions of the Navy to be “adverse” toward the SEALs, the Navy will have violated the injunction.

And that is precisely what the SEALs are saying in their motion to have the US Navy held in contempt for violating the court order.

The motion filed by First Liberty includes others in the group, including a Navy Diver who has not been allowed to PCS, a SEAL who is being preemptively denied promotion, and two others who were removed from training or prevented from travelling to training – despite the fact the injunction was supposed to prevent the Navy from emplacing those restrictions.

Notable in the language of the Navy, too, is the repeated characterization of the SEALs and their peers as “refusing” the vaccine, which does not appear to be true. The troops are in the process of requesting religious accommodations to the vaccine requirement. Religious accommodations are a legitimate military process for exemption. They are no more “refusing” the vaccine than a Sikh sailor requesting a religious waiver for a beard is “refusing” to shave. There is no reason for the US military to characterize any exercise of protected religious liberties within the service as adverse behavior.

That said, characterizing religious liberty as negative behavior is precisely the mantra of one Michael “Mikey” Weinstein, whose “religious freedom” group continues to say that they will not support religious exemptions to a vaccine by any person who has not always objected to all vaccines (which means no one, since the military has no record of granting a vaccine exemption for a serving member). The problem with resting on that criterion alone, of course, is that Weinstein has effectively declared himself judge and jury over both the validity of an entire religion’s views of medication as well as what determines a “good” adherent to that particular faith. Mikey Weinstein is, of course, both a private citizen and an idiot, so he is entitled to do that. The US military is not; at least, it isn’t the former.

In an unashamedly blatant attempt at attention-seeking, Weinstein even awkwardly tried to blame former President Trump for the troops’ exemption requests — despite the fact Trump supports the vaccine. Intellectual consistency has never been Mikey’s strong point.

While the ultimate outcome of the SEAL’s lawsuit is unclear, it seems evident the US Navy sees vaccine mandate compliance, and the discharge of those who will not accede, as a foregone conclusion. As a result, rather than sincerely making an effort to protect the religious liberties of its troops – even if it does not agree with those religious beliefs – the Navy seems to have made a mockery of both their liberties and the judicial process engaged to defend them.

Regardless of the final outcome, due to the Navy’s behavior, the US military’s claim to protecting the rights of its troops to have and exercise their sincerely held religious beliefs will have been damaged in the process.

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