On Senator Ted Cruz’s excellent Verdict podcast, the Senator told the story of U.S. Navy Lieutenant Levi Beaird, a top-rated Navy surface warfare officer, who refused to get the COVID vaccine on religious grounds. Senator Cruz invited Lieutenant Beaird to be his personal guest at the State of the Union address Tuesday night to highlight the Navy’s shabby treatment of Navy servicemembers even after President Biden signed the 2022 National Defense Authorization Act (2022 NDAA), which stopped the military’s practice of discharging servicemembers who refused the vaccine.
Lieutenant Beaird not only is a top-rated Navy surface warfare officer, but he also graduated from the Naval Postgraduate School with a master’s degree in national security studies. He was awarded “a $105,000 retention bonus, which is paid in installments. The education and bonus obligate him to serve three years as a department head. If he doesn’t meet the obligation, he must pay the Navy back for the cost of both.” And he expected to be assigned as the chief engineer on a Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) out of Mayport, Florida.
But, Lieutenant Beaird “refused to receive the Navy’s mandated COVID-19 shot and was threatened with a discharge from the Navy. Days before he was to be involuntarily discharged, in March of 2022, a court decision in the case Navy SEALs 1-26 v. Biden stopped the discharge process.” The court found that the Navy’s 50-step COVID religious exemption review process, which resulted in a denial in all 4,000 cases, was “theater” and a “rubber stamp” for the automatic denials that occurred in each case.
As mentioned, the 2022 NDAA has stopped the military’s practice of discharging servicemembers who refused the vaccine, but what it didn’t do is stop the Navy from persecuting the 4,000 servicemembers who had refused the jab on religious grounds.
Although Beaird was relieved to find that he would not be involuntarily discharged from the Navy, that was not the end of the matter. That’s because a motion from DOD to partially stay the court’s ruling to allow DOD to continue to make decisions regarding “operational deployment and assignment decisions” was granted by the United States Supreme Court, in a decision noting the Court’s reluctance “to intrude upon the authority of the Executive in military and national security affairs.”
Interestingly, Justice Alito, joined by Justice Gorsuch, dissented from the grant of DOD’s motion for partial stay, calling the grant “a great injustice to the…Navy Seals and others…who have volunteered to undertake demanding and hazardous duties to defend our country. These individuals appear to have been treated shabbily by the Navy, and the Court brushes all that aside. I would not do so, and I therefore dissent.”
As things stand now, Lieutenant Beaird’s discharge is on hold, but so is his assignment as chief engineer, a post critical for advancement in his Navy career. And, adding insult to injury, the Navy is demanding that Beaird pay back his $105,000 retention bonus and the costs of his postgraduate education. The stress on Beaird “and his family has also been immense, given that he’s suffered from anxiety and depression as a result of the difficulties. Beaird’s career trajectory was completely upended, despite documented performance outpacing a number of similar officers.”
Fox News has also reported that other Navy servicemembers who refused the COVID vaccine “were transferred into deplorable living conditions and, in some cases, were unable to leave while awaiting termination from the military.”
Fortunately, litigation is still proceeding in federal court in Texas and may wind up in the Supreme Court yet again, but the litigation process is inherently uncertain. Given that uncertainty, Senator Cruz recently introduced the Americans Act, which “is designed to provide relief to those who’ve been unfairly targeted, whether by reinstating those who were fired at their previous rank, or by ensuring they receive an honorable discharge.”
Whether the Americans Act will pass and the exact effect it will have for Lieutenant Beaird are unknown, but Senator Cruz invited Lieutenant Beaird to the State of the Union address “so that politicians in D.C. could have a name and a face highlighting the ‘gross injustice‘ done to those who were affected.”
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