In a groundbreaking opinion and order issued in Harkins v. USA, a putative class action filed on behalf of 1,000+ Coast Guard members who were illegally discharged, United States Court of Federal Claims Judge Armando Bonilla has found that the Coast Guard did not administer its COVID-19 vaccine policy per the First Amendment and the Religious Freedom and Restoration Act (RFRA).
Exemptions?
Judge Bonilla noted that the Coast Guard granted zero religious exemption requests – out of thousands submitted – until the recission of the vaccine mandate in 2023. By contrast, the Coast Guard had little problem granting medical exemptions. This suggested hostility to the religious beliefs of its Guardsmen. He concluded that the Coast Guard “predetermined that the military’s need for near-universal vaccination trumped the constitutional rights and religious liberties of individual Coast Guardsmen.”
These actions ran against the RFRA as Guardsmen were not only subjected to blanket denials of their religious exemptions but forced to endure a futile appeal process of those denials. These preordained decisions, according to Judge Bonilla, were “cruel.”
Safe?
Judge Bonilla also rejected the government’s argument that the “FDA-approved” COVID-19 vaccines and the UEA vaccines were “medically interchangeable”—an argument put forth by the Coast Guard and other branches of the military that have long been made to circumvent laws prohibiting servicemembers from being subjected to experimental vaccines.
Options?
Considering this, Judge Bonilla stated that the Coast Guard had two options in its COVID-19 vaccine mandate: “recognize the service members’ right to refuse administration of the EUA product offered or seek a presidential waiver of informed consent.” The Coast Guard did neither. Thus, Judge Bonilla held that the Coast Guard’s punishment of these Guardsmen was in error and ordered their violations of refusing the COVID-19 vaccines “must be expunged from their military records.”
Response
With these findings, Judge Bonilla has ordered the reassessment of these Guardsmen’s “religious accommodation requests to conclusively determine whether they were properly involuntarily discharged.”
The reinstatement of backpay and benefits for these wrongly-separated Guardsmen is ongoing. But, based on these negative conclusions, there is hope that the Trump Administration will seek to undo the past wrongs of the Biden Administration.
