Service members separated for refusing the COVID-19 vaccine can now re-enlist, but the Department of Defense requires them to do the impossible first.
During a press briefing Tuesday, Tim Dill — the acting deputy undersecretary of defense for personnel and readiness — outlined the plan for reinstating service members separated during the Biden administration’s vaccine mandate of August 2021, according to a news release from the DoD.
The secretary of defense rescinded the mandate in 2023, but by then, 8,700 service members had already lost their careers.
In January, President Donald Trump signed an executive order reinstating said service members.
“Former service members … are now receiving letters of apology from the department in the mail, along with instructions on how they can pursue returning to service,” Dill said at the news conference.
Those who were involuntarily separated would receive back pay, while those who “voluntarily” separated would not, Dill said. Both, however, would be reinstated with the same rank and pay as when they left.
They will have until April 1, 2026, to express interest, according to the DoD release.
Since Trump’s order, the various military branches have started reaching out to separated service members.
But there’s a catch.
Former members of the Air National Guard, Air Force, and Space Force must first sign a form acknowledging that they “voluntarily separated” or allowed their service to lapse, and that their “decision to separate was made freely and without coercion,” Just the News reported.
It’s a requirement outlined in Trump’s Executive Order, which reads:
“Allow any service members who provide a written and sworn attestation that they voluntarily left the service or allowed their service to lapse according to appropriate procedures, rather than be vaccinated under the vaccine mandate, to return to service with no impact on their service status, rank, or pay.”
R. Davis Younts, a lawyer representing veterans affected by the mandate, told Just the News that some of his clients wouldn’t take the deal.
“I talked to several clients who were forced out,” Younts said. They “have no interest in signing the document,” but would otherwise “gladly come back in. They don’t care much about back pay, but they are not going to sign a false statement just to come back in.”
“If I have clients who I believe have a legitimate claim to rectify an error in justice that occurred — like they should’ve been promoted but weren’t, or were not allowed to reenlist over the vaccine because of an injunction pending– I’d have a hard time advising them to sign it,” since “they’re waiving a lot, saying they left voluntarily, and waiving the opportunity to be compensated for the loss of promotion and backpay,” Younts said.
Younts fears the form acknowledgement is meant to deliberately sabotage returning veterans.
“I’m optimistic that senior leadership and officials that I talked to at the Pentagon understand and are sympathetic to these concerns and want to address them, but I’m seeing a level of malicious compliance in an attempt to stop, slow roll, or make an effort to make reinstatement meaningless for most people impacted by COVID,” Younts said.
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