At the height of the global pandemic, the Pentagon in August 2021 decreed that all U.S. troops must get the COVID-19 vaccine, then launched a logistical push to get the shot to every service member stationed anywhere in the world.
Last December, amid heightened clashes over the vaccine mandates and individual rights, Congress passed and President Biden signed a defense spending bill repealing that mandate, forcing defense officials to take the rare step of rolling back a seemingly iron-clad, military-wide order.The end of the military’s coronavirus mandate has sparked complex legal questions for the Defense Department, troops across each military service, legal scholars, and attorneys on both sides of the vaccine debate.
Mr. Timmons said the military is wary of letting vaccine refusers off without any sort of discipline.Mandate critics, including powerful Republicans in Congress, say the military should simply abandon its review process, given the fact that the policy itself has been revoked. They say the Defense Department should immediately reinstate with back pay the more than 8,000 troops who were kicked out for not getting vaccinated and erase any punishment associated with those cases.
The Pentagon needs to ask itself whether it could now trust those who refused the vaccination to nevertheless immediately comply with all lawful orders they may receive in the future. Or would commanders still have to expect that refusers would filter lawful orders through their personal beliefs or philosophy before deciding to comply? Can a military really effectively operate that way?”
Other troops whose waiver requests were denied and who still refused to get vaccinated could be judged to have disobeyed lawful orders.
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