Liberty Counsel on Friday announced a class action lawsuit on behalf of members of all five branches of the U.S. military – the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines and Coast Guard – against President Joe Biden over his orders they take the experimental COVID shots or face dishonorable discharge.
“The Biden administration has no authority to require the COVID shots for the military or for federal employees or civilian contractors,” explained Mat Staver, Liberty Counsel chairman.
“Nor can the Biden administration pretend that the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act and the First Amendment do not apply to its unlawful mandates. The commander-in-chief must end this shameful treatment and abuse of our brave military heroes. Forcing the COVID shots without consent or consideration for their sincere religious beliefs is illegal.”
The action in U.S. District Court in Florida is on behalf of two Navy SEALs, a Navy EOD Officer, a Navy Senior Chief Petty Officer, a Navy Chaplain, two Marine Lt. Colonels, two Marine Lance Corporals, an Air Force Major, an Air Force Technical Sergeant, an Army National Guardsman, an Army Colonel, and a Coast Guard Lieutenant.
It seeks a temporary restraining order preventing Biden and his appointees from “enforcing, threatening to enforce, attempting to enforce, or otherwise requiring compliance with the Federal COVID-19 Vaccine Mandate…”
Other defendants are Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin and Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas.
Liberty Counsel said the non-military plaintiffs include a Department of Defense contractor who has conducted Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance quantitative and qualitative assessments and studies, whose assessments are briefed to DOD senior leadership to inform decisions on future employment, allocation, and procurement; a federal civilian engineer employed by a large military defense contractor that provides LCD screens used in United States Armed Forces aircraft; a federal civilian contractor employer whose company develops and supports military weapons systems, including current and next generation land vehicles for the Army and next generation Navy vessels; a federal nuclear contractor employee who is a young woman opposed to abortion and who desires to have children of her own one day; and a Department of Energy Civilian Nuclear Tech who works at the Los Alamos National Laboratory.
The individuals for whom the case was filed are not named, but in a sworn statement on Navy chaplain explained, “I personally observed (and the Sailors told me in the course of counseling about) tremendous amounts of coercion, bullying, censorship, and intimidation being brought forth by the command to bear against the personnel who expressed objections of any kind to the COVID shot mandates, including religious objections…And clearly, the military has lost more lives to the increase in suicide from 2020-2021 (at least 1,012) than to all of COVID in 2 years (~52), but suicide has not been a focus.”
It was Austin who dispatched on August 24 the “Mandatory Coronavirus Disease 2019 Vaccination of Department of Defense Service Members.”
But Matthew Oster, who is on Biden’s COVID task force, admitted the shots are “causing myocarditis” in “young men,” and the Journal of the American Medical Association Cardiology confirmed, “Myocarditis Following Immunization with mRNA COVID-19 Vaccines in Members of the U.S. Military.”
Then on Sept. 9 Biden issued a similar order for federal workers.
The case charges that under the federal Emergency Use Authorization law none of the vaccines has gotten full Food and Drug Administration Approval, so they cannot be mandated.
“Under the above statute, there is no legal basis on which the president may waive the EUA in order to mandate the COVID-19 vaccines for the military. Indeed, he has not done so because he has no statutory authority under the law,” Liberty Counsel explained.
Further, the mandates violate the constitutionally protected right to religion.
“The plaintiffs all hold sincere religious beliefs against the COVID shots on the basis that their body is the temple of the Holy Spirit and to defile it is a sin against God. In addition, the plaintiffs do not want to participate directly or indirectly or otherwise be associated with the destruction of human life through abortion by injecting a product that contains or was tested or developed with aborted fetal cell lines,” Liberty Counsel said.
But the military is telling the plaintiffs “there are NO RELIGIOUS exemptions, and merely submitting such a request will subject them to dishonorable discharge.”
Liberty Counsel said it also is representing clients on behalf of the 3.7 million employees under federal government contracts and two million federal employees who are under the Biden administration’s COVID shot mandate.
Via Wnd