An Orlando-based Christian ministry group has breathed new life into a class-action lawsuit filed on behalf of Coast Guard personnel who allege the Biden administration’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate violated their constitutional rights.
Liberty Counsel filed a motion in the Middle District of Florida on July 27 to amend a previous complaint on behalf of Coast Guard members who argue that they should be granted a religious exemption to the vaccine mandate. The plaintiffs have refused the injections based on religious concerns that the COVID-19 shots have been associated with aborted fetal cells, according to Liberty Counsel.
“What the judge (Steven Merryday) wanted to do is to separate all the different branches of the military categories out, and he also wanted to add some local plaintiffs that would live in Tampa or have connections with the Tampa district,” Mat Staver, the lead plaintiffs’ attorney in the case, told the Florida Record.
In turn, five plaintiffs from the Coast Guard have been added to Liberty Counsel’s complaint. The group is pursuing similar litigation on behalf of members of other branches of the military.
The lawsuit is focused on the COVID-19 mandate rather than vaccination mandates in general, Staver said.
“The precedent that is set here would apply to anything in the future,” he said. “There is no pandemic pause button that can override the First Amendment or the Religious Freedom Restoration Act.”
The Biden administration has been acting as though such rights do not exist and arguing that military members’ concerns should be brought as individual lawsuits rather than a class-action complaint, according to Staver. But that would lead to clogged court dockets, he said.
“That would mean thousands of individual cases would have to be brought,” Staver said.
The federal government has granted some medical exemptions to the vaccine mandates but not religious exemptions, according to Staver.
“We know that time is of the essence because so many people are suffering under these mandates,” he said.