A federal district court judge issued a minute order Thursday halting the Biden administration from firing or otherwise punishing federal employees and active-duty military while they await a ruling after they sued the administration over religious exemptions to COVID-19 vaccines.
According to the order seen by Fox News and posted by former President Donald Trump’s attorney Jenna Ellis on Twitter, District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly ordered, “None of the civilian employee plaintiffs will be subject to discipline while his or her request for a religious exemption is pending.”
The judge also specified that “active-duty military plaintiffs, whose religious exemption requests have been denied, will not be disciplined or separated during the pendency of their appeals.”
Biden administration defendants, namely, President Joe Biden himself and all heads of the departments in the executive branch, were ordered to file a supplemental notice by noon Friday to confirm that no plaintiff will be punished pending the court’s ruling, or else “the Court shall order bifurcated briefing, requiring Defendants to file an expedited opposition to the TRO Motion” by November 2 and file their proposed motion to dismiss the case.
According to American Military News, the Biden administration wrote in response to the order that it would not agree to the halt on firings of plaintiffs in the process of seeking a religious exemption to the COVID shot pending the court’s ruling on the temporary restraining order (TRO) motion.
“It is Plaintiffs’ burden to demonstrate impending irreparable harm … but Plaintiffs offer nothing beyond speculation to suggest that their religious exemption requests will be denied and that they will be disciplined at all, much less on the first day that such discipline is theoretically possible,” the Biden administration response reads. “Indeed, if Plaintiffs’ religious exemption requests are granted, Plaintiffs will suffer no injury and the case will become moot.”
According to President Biden’s executive orders 14042 and 14043, issued on September 9, all federal workers, as well as contractors and subcontractors, are mandated to receive COVID shots with limited exceptions. In implementing the orders, the federal agencies have set a November 22 deadline for workers to be fully vaccinated, which is considered achieved two weeks after the second dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna vaccines, or one dose of the Johnson & Johnson shot. The consequences for non-compliance include disciplinary actions, up to and including termination and removal from the contract.
According to the complaint filed against the administration on September 23, the plaintiffs warned that “forcible removal” of hundreds of thousands of federal workers and military personnel would be “thrusting our nation into a state more vulnerable than the United States has experienced in a quarter of a millennium.”
The complaint noted that the link between all of the available COVID vaccines and aborted fetus cells was central to the religious objections offered by the plaintiffs. In addition to that, the mandate came in opposition to their belief that that their bodies are “temples of the Holy Spirit and that they cannot place anything into their Temples without confirmation and conviction from the Holy Spirit.”
The complaint stressed the stakes were high for those suing, as well as all those Americans who are being threatened to lose their jobs for refusing the COVID shot.
“Absent the injunctive relief Plaintiffs request herein, Plaintiffs will suffer irreparable harm as their fundamental rights are trampled and they lose their jobs for no reason beyond their sincerely held religious beliefs,” the complaint said.
Michael Yoder, the attorney representing the plaintiffs, stated to Fox News on Friday that “The Biden administration has shown an unprecedented, cavalier attitude toward the rule of law and an utter ineptitude at basic constitutional contours.”
He continued,
Thankfully, our Constitution protects and secures the right to remain free from religious persecution and coercion. With this order, we are one step closer to putting the Biden administration back in its place by limiting the government to its enumerated powers. It’s time citizens and courts said no to tyranny. The Constitution does not need to be rewritten, it needs to be reread.
The court order came the same day that Florida Governor Ron DeSantis announced that the state is taking the Biden administration to court over the vax mandate for federal contractors, which the suit calls a “radical intrusion on the personal autonomy of American workers.” The state of Florida is seeking a preliminary nationwide injunction to block the mandate from taking effect.
Federal employees and military personnel, along with local political leadership and everyday Americans, are increasingly pushing back against the vaccination mandates, as The New American has previously reported.
Meanwhile, President Biden does not seem to have any issues with people losing their jobs because of them refusing to get inoculated with experimental gene therapeutics. Speaking in Elk Grove Village, Illinois, earlier this month, the president defended the coercive mandates: “When you see headlines and reports of mass firings and hundreds of people losing their jobs, look at the bigger story,” he said, explaining that the “bigger story” is that the companies that introduce such requirements see a higher rate of vaccination.
