Texas Senator Ted Cruz is joined by Rick Scott of Florida, Katie Britt of Alabama, and Mike Lee of Utah – all Republicans -- in introducing the Reaffirming Every Servicemember's Trust Over Religious Exemptions or RESTORE Act in the U.S. Senate.
The legislation requires the Department of Defense (DoD) to establish a special review board to audit the service-wide handling of religious accommodation requests related to the COVID-19 vaccine mandate.
Last year, First Liberty Institute and Hacker Stephens LLP announced a settlement with the U.S. Department of the Navy on behalf of thousands of Navy service members who had challenged the military's vaccine mandate in federal court.
Hiram Sasser is Executive General Counsel at First Liberty Institute.
"Senator Cruz is showing up to the scene and saying, ‘look, we've got to make things right. We've got to restore the rights of our illegally and wrongly discharged by President Biden, these other people who have honorably served in our armed forces, and we need to give them an opportunity to come back in or make sure that their discharges were honorable.”
In many cases, those discharged were just following their religious conscience as allowed by law.
“Congress has said in previous law, the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, that they would be able to do that,” Sasser said.
Bill Clinton signed the RFRA in 1993. The act requires that government not substantially burden a person’s exercise of religion unless it can demonstrate that burden is the least restrictive means of furthering a compelling government interest.
Sasser hopes that the Democrats won't use the filibuster to kill this bill.
"I'm hopeful that there's at least a few of those Democrats over there that are not going to turn their back on soldiers and reeds and airmen and sailors in their time of need."
