Judging Freedom - Judge blocks Pentagon from punishing Navy SEALs who refused COVID vaccine

Episode Date: January 5, 2022

Judge Napolitano breaks down how a Texas federal judge has barred the Defense Department from penalizing 35 Navy SEALs who refused to get vaccinated against COVID-19 on religious grounds.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Judge Napolitano here in Judging Freedom, one of my pop-ups, which I like to do because I know so many of you like this. As soon as there's breaking news in my end of the world, you know, if you go to my YouTube channel, you can sign up for these and you'll actually get a notification as to when I'm going to do them and I love doing these and we're getting great comments from so many of you where I look in the camera as I'm doing now and explain some recent development so last night a federal judge in Washington enjoined, stopped the Navy from force vaccinating Navy SEALs who claim a religious exemption to the vaccination. Now, this should not be newsworthy, but it is newsworthy because so many judges in the United States have gone the other way. But here's the story. The Navy is part of the government. The government is regulated of the government. The government is regulated by

the Constitution. The First Amendment to the Constitution says that the government shall not interfere with the free exercise of religion. So a group of Navy SEALs, the most elite members of the United States Navy, filed a lawsuit against their bosses. Actually, the defendant is President Biden saying you can't force us to take a vaccine because it violates our religious beliefs. Many of them are traditionalist Roman Catholic, and some of the vaccines are derived from aborted fetuses. And to these fellas in the Navy, forcing them to accept a vaccine from that source is participating in an indirect way in abortion, which is condemned by Catholic teaching. That is their argument. The judge accepted it. He doesn't interrogate them to determine the depth of their belief. All you

have to do is say, this is against my religious belief that the government can force me to take a medication against my will. It's a profound decision. It's a great decision. I hope it's not reversed on appeal. The Navy folks have the same religious rights as the rest of us. You do give up some of your rights when you join the military, but the free exercise of religion is not among them. My hat is off to the federal judge in D.C. who ruled that way last night. We'll see where it goes. Judge Napolitano, judging freedom.