Supreme Court Allows Military COVID Vaccine Requirement, Pending Appeal

Steven D. Schwinn, University of Illinois Chicago School of Law

The Supreme Court today stayed a lower-court injunction against the Defense Department's COVID vaccine mandate for 35 Navy special warfare personnel. The ruling means that the Navy can impose the mandate (or consequences) on servicemembers pending their appeal to the Fifth Circuit.

The case, Austin v. U.S. Navy Seals 1-26, arose when 35 Navy servicemembers assigned to naval Special Warfare Command units sued the Defense Department, arguing that DOD's COVID vaccine mandate violated the Religious Freedom Restoration Act and the Free Exercise Clause. The district court ruled in their favor and entered a preliminary injunction against the mandate. It later declined to stay the injunction, however, and the Fifth Circuit affirmed. The government then sought a "partial stay" of the injunction at the Supreme Court.

Today the Court granted the stay in an unsigned order.

Justice Kavanaugh wrote a concurrence, arguing that the district court's preliminary injunction improperly inserted the court into the military chain of command.

Justice Alito dissented, joined by Justice Gorsuch. He argued that DOD set up an unduly burdensome process for religious exemptions, and that it hadn't granted a single one. He claimed that the military's summary rejection of religious exemptions wasn't narrowly tailored to meet its compelling interest in minimizing serious health risks to Navy personnel, and that the government treated servicemembers who sought medical exemptions more favorably than those who sought religious exemptions.