Late Monday President Donald Trump signed an executive order to reinstate service members who were discharged under the military’s COVID-19 vaccination mandate.
The order calls on the secretary of defense and the secretary of homeland security to take action to:
enable those service members reinstated under this section to revert to their former rank and receive full back pay, benefits, bonus payments, or compensation.
The order also covers service members who “voluntarily” left the service rather than comply with the COVID-19 vaccine mandate.
The final clause of the executive order states that it is not;
intended to, and does not, create any right or benefit, substantive or procedural, enforceable at law or in equity by any party against the United States, its departments, agencies, or entities, its officers, employees, or agents, or any other person.
In other words, the executive order is an excellent gesture — but it lacks the teeth to ensure that all members affected by the military’s vaccine mandate are justly compensated for the harms they suffered.
Which is why Military BackPay’s ongoing lawsuits are of continued importance. Military BackPay is a group of lawyers, who according to it’s website are;
representing former service members who were discharged for failing to comply with the now-rescinded DoD [U.S. Department of Defense] Covid-19 Vaccine Mandate
Military BackPay is fighting three class action suits: one for active duty or reserves, another for National Guard members and a third for Coast Guard members.
Military BackPay said in a statement:
We’re grateful to President Trump for leading on the issue and we’re looking forward to working with his Administration to put this into effect for ALL of the thousands of service members who were unlawfully discharged, dropped from orders, forced to retire, and otherwise harmed by the Biden Administration’s illegal mandate.
This is why we filed our class action lawsuits on behalf of service members — to get to this point.
Jan. 23 ruling ‘paves the way for justice for thousands of service members’
Trump’s executive order comes four days after a major ruling in Harkins v. United States, Military BackPay’s case on behalf of Coast Guard members.
The class action lawsuit was filed on Aug. 4, 2023, on behalf of all active-duty and reserve Coast Guard members who were involuntarily discharged due to their unvaccinated status or forced into early retirement.
The suit also represents Coast Guard members who chose to leave rather than comply with the mandate.
Lawyers representing the U.S. tried unsuccessfully to dismiss the case.
On Jan. 23, Judge Armando O. Bonilla ruled that the U.S. government illegally mandated an unlicensed product when the military told members they must get the COVID-19 shot.
The COVID-19 vaccines used at the time of the military’s mandate had only emergency use authorization (EUA) from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
Bonilla’s ruling is a huge deal bringing up several key issues.
In his ruling he said:
The Coast Guard predetermined that the military’s need for near-universal vaccination trumped the constitutional rights and religious liberties of individual Coast Guardsmen.
Highlighting informed consent Bonilla wrote :
It is against this backdrop of human experimentation — rather than the altruistic effort to prevent the spread of a global pandemic — that exacting laws of informed consent must be evaluated.
Ray Flores, attorney, speaking to childrenshealthdefence.org, called it a “miracle” that a judge for the U.S. Court of Federal Claims would;
expose government falsehoods by eviscerating the lie that ‘EUA and licensed vaccines are identical.’
It is what we’ve been saying all along...These experimental vaccines should never have been produced. But knowingly forcing these concoctions into our brave defenders was, to put it politely, an unbecoming perversion of leadership’s duty and purpose.
The judge didn’t issue a decision on whether the plaintiffs should be paid a sum of money, and if so, how much. Instead, he said he expects the parties to discuss bringing their case to the DOD for further proceedings.
Given Monday’s Executive Order that called on the DOD secretary to enable those service members to be reinstated, there is the likelihood of a favourable settlement to be made.