Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) introduced a bill that aims to reverse the harms caused by the military’s mandated COVID-19 vaccine.
The Allowing Military Exemptions, Recognizing Individual Concerns About New Shots (AMERICANS) Act seeks to “provide remedies to members of the Armed Forces discharged or subject to adverse action under the COVID–19 vaccine mandate.”
Cruz said upon the bill’s introduction, “Our military is still dealing with the consequences of the Biden administration’s wrongful COVID-19 vaccine mandate. I led the successful charge for Congress to repeal that mandate, and there is still more to be done. My AMERICANS Act provides remedies for service members punished by the Biden Department of Defense for standing by their convictions.”
The act would require the Department of Defense to offer reinstatement to any servicemember separated over his or her COVID-19 vaccine status, restore the rank of those demoted over the vaccine, compensate them for any pay and benefits lost, expunge any adverse action on a servicemember’s record over the vaccine, and provide a vaccine exemption process.
A companion bill was led by Rep. Pat Harrington (R-NC) in the House.
American Faith reported last year that branches of the U.S. military violated their own COVID-19 vaccine exemption policies.
The Army and Air Force defied time requirements in processing vaccine exemption requests, according to the Pentagon’s inspector general. The average processing time for the requests was 192 days, although the Army is required to complete the filing within 90 days.
It took the Air Force an average of 168 days to review the requests, although they are required to finish the report within 30 days.
“Prolonged delays in addressing requests for religious accommodations could impact a Service member’s job placement and impede the command’s ability to make well-informed deployment and assignment choices,” IG Robert Storch said in a statement at the time of the report’s release. “DoD’s lack of department-level guidance for uniformly characterizing discharges and assigning reentry codes for vaccination refusal resulted in Service members experiencing different impacts to their educational benefits and eligibility to reenlist after discharge.”
