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In the early days of the litigation against the Department of Defense’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate, courts were understandably hesitant to second-guess military judgments about mission accomplishment and readiness. But recent developments indicating that not all military commanders agree with punishing and discharging service members with sincere religious objections to the vaccine mandate might stretch the limits of judicial deference to military judgments.

The U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments April 25 in the case of Joe Kennedy, a Marine veteran-turned-football coach who made a commitment to God to kneel in prayer on the field after football games and was removed from his job as a result.

It’s a bedrock principle of our constitutional democracy that the government may not compel citizens to speak messages that violate their convictions.
This principle applies with full force in our public schools, colleges and universities. As the Supreme Court famously put it 79 years ago when rejecting the compulsory Pledge of Allegiance, public institutions may not “prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein.”