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The U.S. military is illegally denying service members’ requests for religious exemptions from required vaccines, according to a lawsuit filed Tuesday by Children’s Health Defense (CHD) against the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD).
The lawsuit accuses the DOD of enforcing a “two-part strategy” to deny virtually all religious accommodation requests from service members and recruits.
According to the complaint, the military’s policy for granting religious exemptions to new recruits is “ambiguous.” For acting service members, the process for obtaining a religious exemption is a “sham” and “largely theater.”
These policies violate the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, the Administrative Procedure Act, the First Amendment’s clause protecting freedom of religion, and the Fifth Amendment’s equal protection and due process clauses, the complaint alleges.
“Our military members literally put their lives on the line to preserve our freedoms, one of the most essential of which is free exercise of religion,” said CHD General Counsel Kim Mack Rosenberg. “Sadly, those military members who serve to protect those rights cannot themselves exercise the right of religious freedom when it comes to military vaccination requirements.”
CHD also alleges that the DOD’s vaccination schedule is aligned with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) recommended childhood immunization schedule — and that neither the DOD nor the CDC have conducted long-term safety studies on the cumulative effect of administering all of the vaccines on that schedule.
CHD, the sole plaintiff, filed the suit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, on behalf of the nonprofit and its Military Chapter. The suit names Pete Hegseth, in his official capacity as U.S. secretary of defense, as the sole defendant.
CHD seeks to establish that the Religious Freedom Restoration Act applies to vaccination requirements and that the DOD’s adoption of the CDC’s childhood vaccination schedule violates the Administrative Procedure Act.
The lawsuit also asks the court to require the DOD to make religious accommodations available to service members and recruits on the same basis as it does for medical exemptions.
“What CHD is accomplishing with this lawsuit is honorable and needed to shed light on the religious accommodation request process for all future and present military members, and to keep our defenders as healthy and fit as possible,” said Lt. Col. Jackie Frederick, a retired U.S. Air Force officer and member of CHD’s Military Chapter. “Our national security depends on it.”
DOD habitually ignores or denies religious exemption requests
CHD’s lawsuit cites U.S. Supreme Court rulings rejecting blanket denials of religious exemptions, and federal court rulings finding that the U.S. Army, Navy and Air Force rejected virtually all religious exemption requests, often relying on “boilerplate denials that do not reflect individualized consideration.”
Rick Jaffe, lead attorney for the plaintiffs, said these rulings, along with recent actions by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to protect religious exemptions, should force the DOD to change its policies.
“For years, the DOD has created a sham religious-exemption process that denies close to 100% of requests,” Jaffe said. “Just a few days ago, the U.S. Supreme Court in Miller v. McDonald acknowledged, for the first time, that a right to a religious exemption is constitutionally protected.”
The complaint cites DOD data revealing a 98% denial rate for religious exemption requests, even though the DOD has granted “hundreds of medical exemptions without adverse consequences.”
According to Pam Long, director of CHD’s Military Chapter, “hundreds” of active-duty service members who have filed a religious accommodation request have had those requests “ignored or denied” by the DOD, sometimes for months and years.
“Many families contact the CHD Military Chapter and express their desire to serve in the military, but an inability to serve due to the vaccination requirements,” Long said.
DOD exemption policies send ‘conflicting signals’ to potential recruits
In its lawsuit, CHD cites examples of the military’s contradictory religious exemption policies for recruits versus active service members. Those contradictions “send conflicting signals” to men and women seeking to join the military.
For instance, a Marine Officer Candidates School Pre-Ship Preparation Letter states that “officer candidates with outdated/missing immunizations may be medically disqualified during in-processing if they are unable to receive the required immunizations.”
Yet, DOD Instruction 1300.17 states that service members and applicants to the armed services may request an accommodation from “a military policy, practice or duty” that “substantially burdens [their] exercise of religion.”
The DOD also maintains double standards in how it treats religious and medical exemption requests, despite “identical health risks.”
While some service members who receive medical exemptions are granted special accommodations, service members who apply for religious exemptions “are denied comparable exemptions and accommodations,” CHD alleges.
Long said military physicians and officers have no incentive to approve religious or medical exemption requests. She said there is no “established chain of command” to inform recruits of their rights and process their requests.
“Doctors and commanders are trying to achieve 100% compliance on vaccine uptake for their own career-promoting metrics,” Long said.
“Whether it’s called medical or religious, the exemption process inside the DOD runs on the same unwritten rule: boilerplate deny first, justify if necessary,” Jaffe said.
Frederick said that when she served as a unit deployment manager, it was her job to handle service members’ exemption requests. She said requesting a medical exemption “took moving heaven and earth to make it happen.”
DOD vaccine policies, mandates adversely impact recruitment figures
The DOD bases its vaccine mandates on the CDC’s childhood immunization schedule, which currently recommends 72 doses of 15 vaccines by age 18.
Unvaccinated recruits are required to receive “catch-up” doses to bring them into compliance with the immunization schedule and DOD requirements.
According to the complaint, “Neither CDC nor DoD has studied the safety of compressing that schedule into a short catch-up regimen for unvaccinated adults.”
Long said military policies prevent the administration of five vaccines over a short period. However, this requirement is frequently exceeded when combination vaccines, such as the measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine and the diphtheria, tetanus and pertussis (DTaP) vaccine, are administered at the same time.
Reliance on the CDC childhood vaccination schedule and ambiguous or contradictory religious exemption policies affects people’s willingness to enlist in the armed forces, and the military’s ability to recruit members, CHD alleges.
The lawsuit cites data showing that about 1.2% of U.S. children receive no vaccines by age 2, and DOD data indicating that approximately 0.4% of Americans serve in the military during their lives. This results in an extrapolated figure of about 3,000 potential recruits who are barred from enlistment each year.
“Year after year, DoD’s wholesale adoption of the CDC childhood immunization schedule, combined with the absence of a meaningful religious accommodation process for applicants, removes thousands of willing, qualified, religiously observant Americans from the potential recruiting pool,” the complaint states.
Long cited the DOD’s pandemic-era COVID-19 vaccine mandate as an example of a policy that adversely affected the military’s recruitment figures. Recruitment and retention “plummeted to a historical low” while the mandate was in effect, as “8,000 members were discharged and potentially 95,000 left under duress,” she said.
“The military has long faced enlistment and retention challenges,” said Mack Rosenberg. “To refuse to accommodate religious beliefs certainly is not helpful.”
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