DOD pays Liberty Counsel $1.8 million for Covid litigation

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TAMPA, FL — A signed settlement agreement has been filed in the Middle District Court of Florida that requires the Department of Defense (DOD) to pay Liberty Counsel $1.8 million for attorney’s fees and costs after two years of litigation since the Biden administration issued the memoranda mandating that service members receive the Covid-19 shot.

As a result of Liberty Counsel’s class action lawsuits in Navy SEAL 1 v. Austin and Colonel Financial Management Officer, et al. v. Austin, and after Liberty Counsel obtained multiple restraining orders and injunctions, including a class-wide injunction, the DOD was forced to abandon its mandate and rescind the August 24, 2021 and November 30, 2021 memoranda on January 10, 2023.

This settlement agreement comes after thousands of service members have been denied religious accommodation requests (RAR) from the unlawful federal COVID shot mandate. Some service members have been punished, demoted, or discharged as a result. The many restraining orders and the class-wide injunction Liberty Counsel won stopped the DOD’s unlawful shot mandate.

The DOD is now required to pay Liberty Counsel within 21 days.

Liberty Counsel Founder and Chairman Mat Staver said, “The military Covid shot mandate is dead. Our heroic service members can no longer be forced to take this experimental jab that conflicts with their religious convictions. Through our daily work with service members in every branch, we have had the privilege of knowing some of the finest people who love God and love America. These heroes should not have been mistreated by our own government. At the same time, we have come to realize that many of the high-ranking members of leadership, the Pentagon, and the Biden administration need to be replaced. Collectively, they dishonored the brave men and women who defend our freedom. We stand ready to defend our defenders of freedom if any religious discrimination occurs in the future.”

5 COMMENTS

  1. Weird, I remember lining up and getting jabbed with multiple vaccines in basic training and that was the least difficult thing we did, aside from showing up. Wasn’t a big deal then, and shouldn’t be one now. People only got upset about it because someone told them to be upset, nothing else. The religious exemption here was a smoke screen for ulterior motives, as anyone who used it I 100% guarantee had to have other vaccines to enlist in the first place.

  2. Silence in the comments sections. SHOCKING.
    did you learn anything? Anything of high morals? For example, maybe you learned you don’t have the right to force others to do something that YOU want them to do? Guess who pays the DOD. So take a wild guess on who’s on the hook for this just justice.

    • The enabling law of the DoD’s FY2023 budget required the rescission of a COVID vaccine mandate.

      Liberty Counsel, as a 501(c)(3), and presumably under the provisions of the Equal Justice for All Act, was able to receive $1.8MM for statutory attorney’s fees. The government had virtually nothing to say about this, other than to act to dispose of the case, according to law.

      The fact that they settled was a measure of mootness (i.e. there’s no vaccine mandate, so there’s nothing for the court to decide). The settlement itself calls out that there is no merit (or lack of merit) to the claims made in the lawsuits. It also positively affirmed that the DoD did nothing wrong.

    • Shocking too, but then not really, is that someone like yourself (MsV) makes a comment without even reading up on the specific litigated case of Navy Seal v Austin 2022. The decision as you know was based upon a USMC Captain’s religious beliefs (Muslim) on a request for a religious accommodation. Jeez, that silence you heard was people reading because they don’t trust (nor should they) certain news sources. Another case to read up on, US Dominion, Inc v Fox News Network, LLC.