The Biden administration asked the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday to reinforce its Covid-19 vaccine mandate to groups of Navy SEALs who are not vaccinated, dishonestly claiming it “poses intolerable risks to safety and mission success.”
The Pentagon asked the Supreme Court to intervene after Judge Reed O’Connor granted a temporary injunction to a group of Navy SEALs from taking the Biden COVID vaccine mandate based on their requested religious exemptions.
The decision stopped the Department of Defense from punishing a group of 35 Navy special operations forces who refused to get vaccinated for Covid-19.
“This application seeks relief from a preliminary injunction that usurps the Navy’s authority to decide which servicemembers should be deployed to execute some of the military’s most sensitive and dangerous missions,” Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar argued.
“The court’s preliminary injunction not only prohibits the Navy from applying the COVID-19 vaccination requirement to respondents but also requires the Navy to assign and deploy them without regard to their lack of vaccinations notwithstanding military leaders’ judgment that doing so poses intolerable risks to safety and mission success,” she continued.
According to the letter addressed to the Supreme Court, it stated that the court should grant a partial stay for two reasons:
First, even if respondents’ claims had merit, respondents would not be entitled to an injunction dictating the Navy’s de-
ployment, assignment, and operational decisions. RFRA authorizes a court to issue only “appropriate relief,” 42 U.S.C. 2000bb-1(c), and respondents’ Free Exercise claims likewise would support only relief that comports with “traditional principles of equity jurisdiction.” An injunction that trenches on core Article II prerogatives concerning which military servicemembers are qualified for which missions is inconsistent with those traditional principles and has no precedent in our Nation’s history.Second, respondents’ claims lack merit. SEALs and other members of the Special Warfare community can be called upon to deploy anywhere in the world on short notice; to complete high-risk missions under extreme conditions; and to operate in small teams and close quarters for extended periods. To take just one well-publicized example, in 2009 a team of SEALs flew 8,000 miles to respond to the hijacking of a U.S. flagged ship by Somali pirates and ultimately played a critical role in rescuing the ship’s captain, who was being held hostage.
The Navy has an extraordinarily compelling interest in ensuring that the servicemembers who perform those missions are as physically and medically prepared as possible. That includes vaccinating them against COVID-19, which is the least restrictive means of achieving that interest.
COVID numbers finally dropped off in the past month due not to the vaccines but to herd immunity brought on by the Omicron variant. Yet, the Biden regime still insists on pushing their mandates on healthy young men who don’t need it.