Michael Poffenbarger v. Frank Kindall, III, et al.

Dayton, Ohio civil rights lawyers represented the Plaintiff claiming that the Air Force's COVID-19 mandate, as applied to him, violated the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) and the First Amendment.



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In August 2021, at the direction of President Biden, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin mandated that all members of the armed forces be vaccinated against COVID-19. The Secretary of the Air Force (then Frank Kendall, the lead defendant when this suit was filed) accordingly mandated that all the Air Force's active-duty service members and reservists (including members of the Air Guard) be vaccinated. Under the Department of the Air Force's guidelines, service members could seek exemptions from the mandate on medical, administrative, or religious grounds. In the months that followed, the Department granted medical and administrative exemptions "relatively freely”; but as of September 2022, on the record before us then, the number of exemptions the Department had granted on religious grounds stood "at zero.” Doster v. Kendall, 48 F.4th 608, 610 (6th Cir. 2022). Meanwhile, service members who refused the vaccination without an exemption were subject to various punitive measures—including separation from the Air Force (i.e., termination).

Affirmed