{"id":39465,"date":"2025-01-30T11:05:32","date_gmt":"2025-01-30T17:05:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.altonmo.com\/?p=39465"},"modified":"2025-01-28T11:38:14","modified_gmt":"2025-01-28T17:38:14","slug":"federal-judge-rules-in-favor-of-coast-guard-members","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.altonmo.com\/politics\/government\/federal-judge-rules-in-favor-of-coast-guard-members-20250130","title":{"rendered":"Federal Judge Rules In Favor Of Coast Guard Members"},"content":{"rendered":"

In a groundbreaking\u00a0opinion and order issued in Harkins v. USA<\/a>,\u00a0<\/em>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<\/strong> administer its COVID-19 vaccine policy per the First Amendment and the Religious Freedom and Restoration Act (RFRA).<\/p>\n

Exemptions?<\/h3>\n

Judge Bonilla noted that the Coast Guard granted zero<\/strong> religious exemption requests \u2013 out of thousands submitted \u2013 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 \u201cpredetermined that the military\u2019s need for near-universal vaccination trumped the constitutional rights and religious liberties of individual Coast Guardsmen.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

These actions ran against the RFRA<\/strong> 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\u00a0\u201ccruel.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

Safe?<\/h3>\n

Judge Bonilla also rejected the government\u2019s argument that the \u201cFDA-approved\u201d COVID-19 vaccines and the UEA vaccines were \u201cmedically interchangeable\u201d\u2014an 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.<\/p>\n

Options?<\/h3>\n

Considering this, Judge Bonilla stated that the Coast Guard had two options in its COVID-19 vaccine mandate: \u201crecognize the service members\u2019 right to refuse administration of the EUA product offered or seek a presidential waiver of informed consent.\u201d The Coast Guard did neither. Thus, Judge Bonilla held that the Coast Guard\u2019s punishment of these Guardsmen was in error and ordered their violations of refusing the COVID-19 vaccines \u201cmust be expunged from their military records.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

Response<\/h3>\n

With these findings, Judge Bonilla has ordered the reassessment of these Guardsmen\u2019s \u201creligious accommodation requests to conclusively determine whether they were properly involuntarily discharged.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

US Court of Federal Claims Judge Bonilla found that the Coast Guard did not administer its COVID-19 vaccine policy correctly.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":11692,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[46],"tags":[243,230,219,211,209,203,205],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.altonmo.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39465"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.altonmo.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.altonmo.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.altonmo.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.altonmo.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39465"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.altonmo.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39465\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":39471,"href":"https:\/\/www.altonmo.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39465\/revisions\/39471"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.altonmo.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11692"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.altonmo.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39465"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.altonmo.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39465"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.altonmo.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39465"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}