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January 30, 2025
Trump Orders Military To Reinstate Members Booted for Refusing COVID Vaccines, To Their Former Rank And Receive Full Back Pay, Benefits, Bonus Payments, Or Compensation
By Suzanne Burdick (Defender) - All News Pipeline
President Donald Trump on late Monday 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.
However, Children’s Health Defense (CHD) General Counsel Kim Mack Rosenberg said court cases are still important for ensuring that all military members negatively affected by the military’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate receive the mandated backpay.
Mack Rosenberg explained:
“The executive order signed by President Trump offers a variety of means of redress to service members who refused the COVID-19 injections during the almost year-and-a-half that military mandates were in place and who either were discharged because of that refusal or who left the service because of the mandate.
“However, the order does not create a private remedy. The executive government cannot magically issue checks for back pay to these members overnight.”
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 a wonderful 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, she added.
That’s why Military BackPay’s ongoing lawsuits are vital, Mack Rosenberg said.
Military BackPay is a group of lawyers “representing former service members who were discharged for failing to comply with the now-rescinded DoD [U.S. Department of Defense] Covid-19 Vaccine Mandate,” according to its website.
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.
“Those cases and the executive order complement one another,” Mack Rosenberg said. “The courts need to find that laws were violated, so there’s a legal basis for financial settlement.”
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 servicemembers 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.”
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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 that “paves the way for justice for thousands of service members,” said attorney Ray Flores.
Flores 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,” he said. “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.
“Based on the Judge’s ruling and yesterday’s Executive Order that called on the DOD secretary to enable those service members to be reinstated, there is an increased likelihood of a favorable settlement,” Flores said.
Coast Guard COVID vaccine mandate violated constitutional rights
In his decision, Bonilla also made other important findings that will aid the legal arguments of those fighting for back pay. For instance, he found that the Coast Guard violated members’ constitutional rights when it denied all requests for religious accommodation.
“The Coast Guard predetermined that the military’s need for near-universal vaccination trumped the constitutional rights and religious liberties of individual Coast Guardsmen,” Bonilla wrote.
Mack Rosenberg commended Bonilla for highlighting the importance of informed consent and exemptions, especially with an EUA product.
According to the ruling:
“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.”
The case “brings to light the nuanced issues concerning EUA products, informed consent and the actions taken by our government during the pandemic,” Mack Rosenberg said.
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