On Aug. 14, 2021, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, after months of build-up, mandated that all service members receive one of the available Covid-19 shots. Those who would not comply were to be separated (that is, discharged) from service. Essentially, they would be fired. The Department of Defense (DOD) has been dealing with the disastrous consequences of that mandate ever since.
Many within the services saw this as a political move — a purging of undesirable opponents from the ranks. The services were flooded with a torrent of exemption requests they were not equipped to handle. Backlogs started immediately, with many exemption requests taking a year or longer to be acted upon. Many exemption requests never got decided at all. When the services went forward with separations, they found themselves facing litigation — litigation that was not going well.
A group of SEALs claimed the Navy was not seriously considering their religious objections to the vaccine requirement. The Fifth Circuit agreed and prevented the Navy from disciplining or discharging the SEALs, noting that the Navy had not approved a single religious exemption to any vaccine in more than seven years. The administration won a partial victory at the Supreme Court when they regained the right, pending further litigation, to consider vaccination status in deployment or assignment decisions. In a separate case, when one Navy commander won a temporary injunction against the mandate, the service chose to sideline the destroyer he commanded rather than deploy the ship with him in
