By Mark P. Nevitt
(Just Security | April 12, 2021) By some estimates, approximately one-third of U.S. military service members have opted out of the COVID-19 vaccine. Some think that number could be higher, for example, according to a new report, nearly 40 percent of U.S. Marines are declining vaccinations. An earlier December report from the nonprofit advocacy group Blue Star Families estimated that nearly half of military members would decline the vaccine if offered. In response, six members of Congress recently sent a letter to President Joe Biden, asking him to make the vaccine mandatory for all military service members.
In what follows, I address three questions that have arisen from the U.S. military’s ongoing efforts to vaccinate members of the armed forces:
- Can military members be legally required to receive the COVID-19 vaccination?
- What lessons from earlier military vaccination efforts (e.g. anthrax) can be applied to COVID-19?
- What is the impact on vaccination refusal on military readiness?
Can military members be legally required to receive the COVID-19 vaccination?
Ultimately, yes—but this answer requires a bit of nuance and process. As of this writing, the president and defense secretary have not ordered mandatory vaccination for the military (or the general public for that matter). COVID-19 vaccination remains strictly voluntary for all military service members, consistent with earlier pledges by Biden that he would not make vaccinations mandatory. But that could change, particularly for deployed service members who work in tight quarters where infection rates can spike quickly. For now though, DoD appears committed to the voluntary vaccination approach.
As a statutory matter, in 2003, Congress passed a law (10 U.S.C. § 1107a) that requires informed consent prior to military members receiving vaccinations issued under an emergency use authorization (EUA). All three COVID-19 vaccinations being used in the United States —Moderna, Johnson & Johnson and Pfizer—are being administered under an EUA. And all three have not been fully approved by the Food and Drug Administration. By some estimates, full approval may take up to two years.
But, according to the law, the president can waive this informed consent requirement if he determines that it is “in the interest of national security” to do so. While Biden has not done this, some members of Congress have called upon him to do just that.
If this informed consent provision is ultimately waived, military commanders can clearly order military members in their command to receive the vaccine. This is consistent with the “Failure to obey an order or regulation” under the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ). Even if the informed provision is not waived by Biden, a mandatory military vaccination order may survive challenges in military criminal courts implementing the UCMJ. Federal civil courts would likely scrutinize such a move much more closely. This is based upon prior decisions and the military’s experience in implementing the anthrax vaccination program, which I turn to below.
Relatedly, outside the military context, over 100 years ago, the Supreme Court upheld a local Board of Health’s authority to require smallpox vaccinations during a smallpox epidemic. As Professor Lawrence Gostin at Georgetown Law has previously argued, Jacobson reaffirms the “basic police power of the government to safeguard the public’s health.” This decision, Jacobson v. Massachusetts, has been relied upon during this pandemic to implement mandatory mask wearing and social distancing.
What lessons from earlier military vaccination efforts (e.g. anthrax) can be applied here?
Quite a few. The anthrax vaccine was administered as an “investigational new drug” (IND) in the late 1990s. Congress passed a law in 1998 (10 U.S.C. § 1107), effectively requiring informed consent from military members prior to administration of INDs such as anthrax. This is a different but analogous law to the COVID-19 emergency use authorization. President Bill Clinton signed an executive order in 1999, reaffirming the informed consent requirement and laying out the process for seeking a waiver. But both President Clinton and Bush did not waive the informed consent procedure. The mandatory anthrax vaccination program was administered anyway, although it was started and stopped several times in the early aughts. This was due to issues with the manufacturer’s ability to pass inspections and disagreements about whether the anthrax vaccine was administered consistent with its labeling. Perhaps not surprisingly, orders to take anthrax vaccinations were challenged by military service members in both military and federal courts.
As military commanders ordered anthrax vaccinations, some service members refused, arguing that they had not provided their informed consent to the anthrax inoculation. Federal courts heard civil, administrative, and constitutional challenges, while military judges heard challenges under the UCMJ …
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