DAYTON, Ohio — An Air Force officer stationed at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base recently won a preliminary injunction in a lawsuit against the Air Force because of vaccination status.
What You Need To Know
- Lt. Michael Poffenbarger requested a religious exemption from the Air Force’s vaccine mandate
- He was denied the exemption and filed a lawsuit in January
- The Air Force has only allowed 16 religious exemptions with nearly 4,000 denials
- Poffenbarger was granted a preliminary injunction and hopes to return to the Air Force Reserves once the case is finalized
Late last year, the Air Force announced its policy on vaccination, mandating it for all officers. Lt. Michael Poffenbarger asked for a religious exemption, which was denied, like most religious exemption requests in the Air Force have been.
“If you’re granting thousands of medical and administrative exemptions, those are secular reasons, and so you have to grant it for religious reasons,” Chris Wiest, one of Poffenbarger’s attorneys, said. “Only, it turns out the military have been systemically denying those requests.”
According to the Air Force’s COVID database, there have been nearly 4,000 religious exemption denials, with only 16 approved and another 3,100 still pending. Meanwhile, almost 3,000 medical and administrative exemptions have been approved.
Wiest said it’s not a coincidence.
“The Department of Justice attorneys admitted that those aren’t real exemptions in the sense that their end of service folks who would have otherwise qualified for an administrative exemption and that’s why they granted them,” Wiest said. “It wasn’t sort of a holistically, ‘Oh geez, we’re able to accommodate you.’ No, they are systemically denying them and the Department of Justice admitted that in the Poffenbarger case.”
The admission in court allowed Poffenbarger to win his preliminary injunction. When asked, officials with Wright-Patterson Air Force Base said they could not comment on ongoing litigation.
Poffenbarger has served several overseas deployments and spent 15 years on active duty. He joined the reserves in 2021.
“The reserves were allowing him to ultimately earn a military retirement,” Wiest said. “They were taking that away from him because of that exemption denial. I think we’re going to be able to put, to some degree, Humpty together again at the tail end of this lawsuit.”
Wiest said while this is a win for his team, there’s still another six to nine months of work to finish up the case before Poffenbarger would be able to return to base. He hopes that similar cases across the country could benefit from this one.
“There’s troop shortages right now,” Wiest said. “I don’t understand why they’re insistent on this.”
