OPINION:
I recently had the privilege of testifying before the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic as the only witness qualified to discuss the impact of the Department of Defense’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate on service members.
The purpose of the hearing was to engage in a meaningful discussion regarding the impacts COVID-19 vaccine mandates had on Americans generally. As one congressman rightly stated, “it’s our responsibility to ask the difficult questions — questions that deserve answers.”
Disappointingly, some members used their valuable yielded time to politicize the facts and law relating to the military mandates.
As legal counsel representing over 4,000 Navy service members who suffered tremendous discrimination by the Department of Defense and the Navy for exercising their religious liberty rights, I clearly explained in my written testimony how the executive branch’s violations of the Constitution and federal law over the past two years continue to harm not only those service members but also our national security.
I provided examples of the coercion and punishment Navy and Air Force members needlessly suffered at the behest of the government’s legally and factually debunked generalized claim that vaccination was the only way to maintain health and safety.
Yet one congresswoman seemed to ignore these facts and felt compelled to use her yielded time to spread half-truths and political blame.
Amplifying the story of the March 2020 COVID-19 outbreak aboard the USS Theodore Roosevelt, which led the ship to be diverted to Guam and becoming briefly nonoperational, the congresswoman petitioned that COVID-19 vaccine requirements unequivocally enhanced military readiness.
But what was conveniently omitted from her monologue is that Adm. William K. Lescher, the prior vice chief of naval operations, provided written testimony to the House Armed Services Subcommittee on Readiness on March 23, 2021, stating that “while large portions of world activity were curtailed with the pandemic, the Navy’s operational tempo continued at a high pace, highlighted by eight major Carrier Strike Group and Expeditionary Strike Group deployments.”
In addition, in First Liberty Institute and Hacker Stephens’ lawsuit challenging the mandates, Navy SEALs 1-26 v. Biden, on June 30, 2022, Adm. Lescher testified under oath that the Navy was able to accomplish its missions despite the impact of COVID-19.
By way of example, he affirmed that the USS Harry S. Truman Strike Group deployed from Norfolk, Virginia, in November 2019 with a crew of 5,461 personnel and returned to home port in June 2020 with no cases of COVID-19.
While some members of the subcommittee blamed their colleagues across the aisle for spreading misinformation about vaccine efficacy, others turned that shield into a sword by spreading their own misinformation about the law as it applies to the Defense Department vaccine mandate.
One congressman took his yielded time to ask the licensed physician minority witness the following legal question, “Do people have a free exercise religious right not to follow vaccine mandates as a public health worker in the military, for example, or any secular law that they thinks burdens their religious freedom?”
Since I was not afforded the opportunity to answer this question, I will answer it here — yes.
Rather than cite the documented legal reasons why the military vaccine mandates violated the religious liberty rights of service members who requested a religious accommodation, the attorney congressman used his improper application of the law to convince the public that, under these circumstances, “your religious free exercise rights don’t give you the right to opt out of a generally applicable universal secular law that’s not adopted for the purposes of religious coercion or intimidation.”
Federal courts have already determined the Defense Department’s vaccine mandate was neither neutral nor generally applicable. Yet the congressman gave false credence to his argument by stating that Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia “has consistently rejected the idea that you have a free exercise right to opt-out” of government requirements.
Indeed, in the very case he was referencing, Employment Division v. Smith, the late justice recognized that “where the State has a system of individual exemptions, it may not refuse to extend that system to cases of religious hardship without a compelling reason.”
And it is no secret that the military’s vaccine mandates prohibited religious conduct while permitting secular conduct. If there is any doubt, one need only turn to my written testimony to see that numerous pilots were grounded for religious reasons while pilots with medical exemptions were permitted to engage in their regular duties.
If our elected congressional officials are committed to taking after-action opportunities to improve the lives of Americans and their families, it is incumbent upon them to be receptive to hearing all relevant information, even if that information may damaging to their political platform.
• Danielle Runyan is senior counsel in the Military Practice Group at the First Liberty Institute, a nonprofit law firm dedicated to defending religious freedom for all. Read more at FirstLiberty.org.
For more information, visit The Washington Times COVID-19 resource page.
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