Judge denies Offutt airmen’s request to temporarily block COVID-19 vaccine mandate

OMAHA — A federal choose in Nebraska on Wednesday denied a request for a preliminary injunction that might have quickly protected U.S. Air Power members from penalties for refusing the COVID-19 vaccine.

The order from U.S. District Decide Brian Buescher got here as a part of an ongoing lawsuit from 36 airmen — together with 17 based mostly at Offutt Air Power Base and three serving Lincoln with the Nebraska Air Nationwide Guard — in search of to overturn the vaccine mandate for the army issued by the Pentagon final August. They argue the mandate violates their non secular rights beneath the First Modification and the Non secular Freedom Restoration Act, generally known as RFRA.

The airmen’s lawyer, former Kansas Lawyer Basic Kris Kobach, requested the preliminary injunction in March to bar the Air Power from taking any punitive motion towards any of the 7,835 airmen who’ve requested exemptions beneath RFRA. At a courtroom listening to earlier this month, Kobach claimed that 18 of the 36 airmen face discharge as a result of their requests and appeals have been denied.

Nevertheless, Buescher wrote in his order Wednesday that the Air Power’s course of for contemplating non secular exemptions adhered to the regulation, together with RFRA. He additionally stated that the Air Power’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate is the “least-restrictive” methodology for guaranteeing the “well being and readiness” of its members.

“There might be no severe dispute that the obtainable COVID-19 vaccines have dramatically decreased the dying toll from COVID-19 in america and the world,” Buescher wrote in his ruling. “Additional, the info obtainable illustrates that those that have refused to get vaccinated have essentially had a better likelihood to get and unfold the virus.”

A number of airmen argued the COVID-19 vaccine violated their non secular beliefs as a result of it used analysis from cell strains taken a few years in the past from aborted fetuses. Citing that argument, Capt. Ian McGee, an RC-135 teacher pilot with the Offutt-based fifty fifth Wing, stated he would slightly quit his nine-year army profession than get the vaccine.

“It goes towards my sincerely held non secular beliefs as a born-again Christian,” McGee testified. “My resolve is to stick with my relationship with Jesus Christ.”

Buescher acknowledged that argument in his ruling, and stated it has usually been utilized by main non secular teams to object the analysis’s use in drugs. Nevertheless, he stated it isn’t a justification for refusing vaccinations.

“Lots of those self same religions have concluded that the distant affect of what they deem to be religiously or ethically objectionable analysis utilized for the vaccines doesn’t help refusal to take the vaccines on non secular grounds in the present day,” Buescher wrote.