U.S. District Judge Reed O’Connor ruled in favor of the U.S. Navy Seals against President Joe Biden’s vaccine mandate, granting a preliminary injunction yesterday blocking the Department of Defense Department, an executive branch administrative agency, from punishing a group of Navy sailors, who rather than just succumb to the orders did what they do best—fight back and won.

The Lawsuit

Filed by a nonprofit religious freedom advocacy called First Liberty Institute, a group of troops including Navy SEALS and members in the Naval Special Warfare Command filed the lawsuit against the following targets:

President Joe Biden
Défense Secretary Lloyd Austin
Navy Secretary Carlos Del Toro
Defense Department

Citing fundamental rights to practice their Christian beliefs, the Navy members stated that because the vaccine was developed from aborted fetal cell lines that they would not accept the jabs—this would be an “affront to their Creator.”

The Ruling

The federal judge did acknowledge the COVID-19 pandemic’s severe impact on the military and society stating, “This Court does not make light of COVID-19′s impact on the military. Collectively, our armed forces have lost over 80 lives to COVID-19 over the course of the pandemic.”

However, reported by Dan Lamothe for the Washington Post, Judge O’Connor indicated the weight of these rights declaring “loss of religious liberties outweighs any forthcoming harm to the Navy.” Moreover, the federal judge continued, “even the direst circumstances cannot justify the loss of constitutional rights.”

Dan Lamothe also updated on the status of an ongoing lawsuit initiated by 35 Navy sailors, based on religious preferences, who are resisting the sweeping mandate of forced COVID-19 jabs. In what could be interpreted as a declaration impacting far more than this case, Judge O’Connor shared that the COVID-19 pandemic “provides the government with no license to abrogate” American freedoms enshrined in the Constitution.

Counter View

Yet the military, under the Pentagon, has required several vaccinations for years now. In countering the potential injunction, DOD officials emphasized this mandate was in place and is like other vaccinations, and few have complained prior to this.

In fact, the Washington Post reports that a great majority of the over 1 million active-duty American service members have already received at least one jab: the Defense Department already commenced termination of military careers of resistors.