February 2, 2022 - Meanwhile, the Army National Guard still has a June 30 deadline for its members to be fully vaccinated. That has set up a skirmish with Republicans fighting COVID-19 related rules, with governors from several states suing or dismissing the Biden administration's mandate. Governors of Oklahoma, Texas, Alaska, Idaho, Nebraska, Mississippi and Wyoming have all said that they will not discharge their troops if they refuse the vaccine while they are on state orders. Guardsmen have dueling obligations to the federal government and the governor of the state they serve, making the conflicting guidelines confusing as rules over who has ultimate control of the Guard have never been fully articulated. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott filed a lawsuit against the Biden administration over the mandate. However, senior leaders in the Texas National Guard have no confidence the governor's suit will work, according to recorded phone calls obtained by Military.com.

January 4, 2022 - U.S. District Court Judge Reed O'Connor, with the Northern District of Texas in Fort Worth, ruled Monday that the DoD has violated the sailors' constitutional right to refuse the vaccine based on their religious beliefs.

A federal appeals court sided with Texas Governor Greg Abbott in a case challenging the Biden Administration’s vaccine mandate for Texas National Guard members, ruling that the federal government’s attempt to punish noncompliance with the mandate was unconstitutional. ... Attorney General Paxton secured a victory in his lawsuit against the Biden Administration’s unlawful vaccine mandate for federal contractors.

December 28, 2022 - The sweeping defense policy bill that repeals the military's COVID-19 vaccine mandate and endorses a 4.6% pay raise for troops is now law.

October 10, 2023 - "For two years, Liberty Counsel has been defending the brave men and women of the U.S. military against Joe Biden's unlawful COVID shot mandates," Staver said in a statement on the firm's website. The settlement funds will go only to Liberty Counsel to cover attorneys fees and costs associated with the lawsuit. The plaintiffs will not receive any of the compensation. The plaintiffs cited religious reasons for refusing the vaccine, objecting to the new technology used to make and test it, which involved the use of cell lines from fetuses aborted in the 1970s and 1980s. The vaccines themselves contain no aborted fetal tissue, according to the Food and Drug Administration. A settlement is not an admission of guilt or wrongdoing by either party. The judge’s ruling was first reported by Military Times. Roughly 17,000 service members refused the vaccine and more than 8,400 were discharged for their decision, including 3,717 Marines, 2,041 Navy sailors, 1,841 Army soldiers, and 834 Air Force

In addition, although the Biden Administration contended that the mandate was necessary to ensure military “readiness,” the Administration repealed the mandate in 2023, revealing that it had no relation to readiness.

December 7, 2021 - Republicans in Congress have been pushing the Pentagon to suspend its vaccine mandate, arguing that discharging potentially thousands of service members would hamper the military's ability to defend the country.

August 12, 2021 - Disobedience of a lawful order is a criminal offense under the Uniform Code of Military Justice. That said, are there any defenses to such disobedience that can be raised at a court-martial?

December 1, 2021 - Fourteen service members have been granted a permanent medical exemption. The Marines have said unequivocally that any service member who refused the vaccine would be discharged. The statement released on Nov.

January 26, 2023 - Republicans have argued that it ... back into the military would undermine good order and discipline because the mandate was a lawful order....

December 7, 2022 - The military's COVID-19 vaccine mandate would be repealed under a compromise must-pass annual defense bill unveiled Tuesday night, ending the requirement that all active-duty and part-time troops get the shot.

January 5, 2023 - Thousands of troops across all services who had pending religious exemptions for the COVID-19 vaccine are no longer facing the risk of separation from the military after the Pentagon announced it won't review their cases anymore in the wake of a law eliminating the vaccine mandate. In total, 17,500 troops were seeking a religious exemption, according to an internal Defense Department document reviewed by Military.com. An additional 19,000 troops had already had their religious exemption requests adjudicated, with only a fraction being approved across the active duty and reserve components. The Marine Corps approved the fewest, with only 0.52% of requests approved; the Air Force and Space Force, 2.31%; the Navy, 1.02%; and the Army, 6.04%. Read Next: Pentagon Unveils New Parental Leave Policy After Delay Caused Uncertainty for Troops · While the Biden administration has stood firm on the vaccine mandate since it was implemented in August 2021, pressure from Republicans in Congress to el

February 9, 2022 - Although all three cases seem poised to challenge the Pentagon's vaccine mandate for COVID-19, Zaid doesn't hold out much hope that they will get to that point. "It's so few people involved … it wouldn't surprise me, at the end of the day, that something is worked out so that these cases don't continue and these guys don't take the shots," he said. "Maybe they're just put somewhere else in sort of a compromise." But the lawyer who brought down the anthrax mandate is also quick to point out that he "won because the licensing was done so poorly." "We never got anywhere, legally, on the safety, efficacy or necessity issues because, quite frankly, those are policy arguments and the court wasn't going to interfere with or supersede what DoD believed," he explained. "The other huge difference between the anthrax vaccine and the COVID vaccine is we did not have ideology in the equation -- it was not political," Zaid said.

August 6, 2021 - In 2003, a federal judge agreed with service members who filed a lawsuit asserting the military could not administer a vaccine that had not been fully licensed without their consent, and stopped the program.