Trey Paul, FISM News
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Religious liberties remain under attack in our country. Thankfully, the acting inspector general for the Department of Defense (DOD) helped shine a light on the attack in a report that tipped off the Secretary of Defense about reckless denials of religious accommodation requests (RAR) for exemptions from the military COVID-19 vaccine mandate.
A recent report by Just the News included the bombshell memo from the DOD’s acting inspector general to the Secretary of Defense.
In it, he reveals that the purpose is “to inform you of potential noncompliance with standards for reviewing and documenting the denial of religious accommodation requests of service members identified through complaints submitted to my office.”
“The Department of Defense hotline received dozens of complaints regarding denied religious accommodation requests from Service members. We found a trend of generalized assessments rather than the individualized assessment that is required by Federal law and DOD and Military Service policies,” wrote acting Inspector General Sean O’Donnell.
The memo was dated June 2, 2022, but it was not forwarded to the secretaries of each military service and the DOD general counsel until three months later, on Sept. 2.
“Additionally, the volume and rate at which decisions were made to deny requests is concerning,” wrote Inspector General O’Donnell.
The appeal authorities of the Services we reviewed indicated that an average of 50 denials per day were processed over a 90-day period. Assuming a 10-hour work day with no breaks or attention to other matters, the average review period was about 12 minutes for each package. Such a review period seems insufficient to process each request in an individualized manner and still perform the duties required of their position.
In a news release, attorney R. Davis Younts wrote that his office received the OIG memo from a whistleblower on September 13, 2022, writing, “not only is it highly significant that the watchdog agency for the Department of the Defense found clear violations of the Constitutional and statutory rights of military members, but it is also deeply troubling that the Secretary of Defense did not act on this information until September 2nd of 2022.”
My clients and I have been attempting to draw attention to the failure of the Department of Defense to follow the law and protect the Constitutional rights of military members since the mandate order was given to the military. We have repeatedly seen blanket denials and attempts to circumvent the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. This document is further evidence that the military has and continues to discriminate against my clients because of their faith.
Younts added in the memo that “in the intervening months, hundreds of military members who submitted religious accommodation requests were wrongfully discharged,” something Texas Republican Senator Ted Cruz and 13 other Republican senators have been trying to stop.
They introduced a bill called the “Allowing Military Exemptions, Recognizing Individual Concerns About New Shots” (AMERICANS) to protect military service members from punishment for choosing not to have the COVID-19 vaccine forced on them by the Biden administration.
“It is absolutely unacceptable that the Biden administration is trying to coerce our men and women in uniform to violate their conscience and religious beliefs, let alone on an issue as polarizing as the COVID-19 vaccine. The AMERICANS Act will ensure that these and similar efforts to politicize our military on this issue are blocked,” Sen. Cruz said.
The OIG memo comes as another 47 members of Congress wrote to Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin last week demanding an end to the COVID vaccine mandate for the military saying, “we clearly see your vaccine mandate as the primary cause of the Department’s recruiting difficulties.”