First Liberty Institute filed a lawsuit on behalf of 35 active-duty SEALs and three reservists pursuing a religious exemption to the mandate, as reported by Fox News Digital. The case has since been amended to extend to a class action lawsuit encompassing all Navy service members pursuing religious accommodation.
In March, the Supreme Court blocked a lower court's order in Texas that would have forced the Navy to stop implementing the vaccine mandate. Now, the case is proceeding to be litigated in lower national courts. Unvaccinated SEALs and other sailors the U.S. government has not yet terminated are stuck in limbo, with many of them forced into less-than-desirable alternative housing by the military or barred from traveling outside their base.
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In a court filing in June by First Liberty in the Northern District of Texas Fort Worth Division District Court, sailors recounted deplorable conditions on large U.S. vessels, where they are still waiting as their cases are adjudicated.
One sailor who is now part of the class action lawsuit announced in a court-filed declaration that they "could not leave the area" after asking to be terminated from the military due to religious objections to the mandate and were moved to the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower aircraft carrier's berthing barge, where the conditions are "deplorable."
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"Because I could not leave the area, I moved onto the berthing barge for the Eisenhower. The conditions on the barge are deplorable, much like the USS George Washington, which is anchored in the same shipyard. There is mold everywhere, and the barge's toilets back up and leak. The water leaks out of the toilet's base and collects near my rack and into the hall. On bad days, it goes into the berthings on the other side. The leaks seem to be sewage—it smells like sewage and looks like it too. See Exhibit C (water I've mopped up from under my rack)."
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"There is some sort of worm thriving in the stagnant water in the toilet bowls and on the floor in the leaked water around the base of the toilets. I do not feel comfortable or safe in this environment and I have contacted mental health services multiple times," the sailor went on.
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"I do want—desperately—to be separated from the Navy as soon as possible, but I struggle with withdrawing my request as I feel it could signal that my religious objection was somehow not genuine, and it is. It feels wrong to have to renounce my beliefs to get the Navy to separate me," they went on.
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