Reed O’Connor

Today is Sunday and so per recent policy, I am devoting this piece to a single individual. Reed Charles O’Connor (born June 1, 1965) is a United States District Judge of the United States District Court for the Northern District of Texas. 

Why would I choose a judge to be recognized in my Sunday piece? After all judges have sworn to uphold the Constitution, and so when they do just that … what’s the big deal? As many of us are becoming more aware, there seems to be a cadre of “feel good judges” who seem to be pushing the Constitution into the background when they make their decisions. Not so, Judge Reed O’Connor, who issued a stay in response to a lawsuit filed by First Liberty Institute in November on behalf of 35 active-duty SEALs and three reservists seeking a religious exemption to Biden’s vaccine mandates. 

“The Navy service members in this case seek to vindicate the very freedoms they have sacrificed so much to protect. The COVID-19 pandemic provides the government no license to abrogate those freedoms. There is no COVID-19 exception to the First Amendment,” O’Connor wrote in his ruling. “There is no military exclusion from our Constitution.”

O’Connor’s ruling comes as potentially thousands of U.S Marines face potential discharge for refusing the vaccine after the Department of Defense’s mandate on all active-duty service members went into effect for the Marine Corps on Nov. 28.

O’Connor criticized the Navy’s 50-step process for evaluating religious exemption requests, writing that “the first fifteen steps require an administrator to update a prepared disapproval template with the requester’s name and rank. In essence, the Plaintiffs’ requests are denied the moment they begin.”

“The Navy provides a religious accommodation process, but by all accounts, it is theater. The Navy has not granted a religious exemption to any vaccine in recent memory. It merely rubber stamps each denial.”

O’Connor went on to say that it is not the duty of the court to decide whether these religious objections are sincere.

When asked about Judge Reed O’Connor, liberals will likely comment that he is a shill for conservatives, whereas I would instead say that he is a shill for the Constitution.

1/9/22