The Air Force admitted during a preliminary injunction hearing on Monday that it only accepted religious accommodation requests for the COVID-19 vaccine from airmen who were already exiting the service, Breitbart reported.
The branch has allegedly denied the exemption requests of over 7,595 applicants and only granted 46, an attorney representing the airmen stated in the courtroom.
The 36 airmen seeking accommodation in a federal court case in Nebraska are represented jointly by the Alliance for Free Citizens and the America First Policy Institute.
“The hearing today confirmed that the military religious accommodation process is pure theater. The answer is always no. The Air Force has granted zero accommodation requests that were not effectively early retirements,” AFC General Counsel Kris Kobach told the outlet, claiming the Air Force verbally conceded they were engaging in the practice.
“This case is so important because the very men and women who are fighting to defend our constitutional freedoms are having their own constitutional freedoms destroyed,” he added.
There are more than 24,000 religious accommodation requests across the military services, according to the evangelical Christian group Liberty Counsel. However, statistics from the services show only 100 accommodation requests have been granted.
“Every day our staff communicates with service members and their spouses. Every week one of our attorneys communicates with hundreds of service members on conference calls in which they share heart-wrenching stories of the pressure, abuse, and unlawful violations of their religious free exercise rights protected under the First Amendment and RFRA,” Liberty Counsel wrote in a statement late last month on behalf of several service members seeking an injunction.
More than 3,400 service members have been discharged from the military over non-compliance with the Biden administration’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate, including 351 active-duty airmen, per Breitbart.
© 2024 Newsmax. All rights reserved.