The Supreme Court ruled that President Joe Biden in indeed commander-in-chief of the U.S. armed forces, which has been true for every president in history, as clearly laid out in the Constitution.
However, the decision wasn’t unanimous, which suggests that three of the most conservative justices either think Biden isn’t commander-in-chief or haven’t bothered to read the document they swore to “preserve, protect, and defend” before they took their seat on the highest court in the country.
Vox reports that the 6-3 decision is a troubling sign that the judicial branch has become more political than ever:
The Court’s decision in Austin v. U.S. Navy SEALs 1-26 largely halted a lower court order that permitted certain sailors to defy a direct order. A group of Navy special operations personnel sought an exemption from the Pentagon’s requirement that all active duty service members get vaccinated against Covid-19, claiming that they should receive a religious exemption.
A majority of the Court effectively ruled that, yes, in fact, troops do have to follow orders, including an order to take a vaccine.
The decision is undeniably a win for the balance of power between the executive branch and the judiciary that has prevailed for many decades. But the fact that the Court had to weigh in on this at all — not to mention that three justices, Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, and Neil Gorsuch, dissented from the majority — is a worrisome sign about America’s judiciary.
Alito’s reasoning in his dissent is nothing short of tortured logic. According to him, members of the armed services should have the right to disobey orders handed down by their commanders, including the president of the United States, because the vaccination order didn’t provide a strong enough rationale for a religious exemption to refuse the COVID vaccine.
“In order to win at trial,” Alito wrote in response to the Navy’s warnings, “it would not be enough for the Government to posit that sending an unvaccinated Seal on such a mission might produce such consequences.” Rather, the Navy would have to prove that requiring vaccination “is the least restrictive means of furthering the interest it asserts in light of the present nature of the pandemic, what is known about the spread of the virus and the effectiveness of the vaccines, prevalent practices, and the physical characteristics of Navy Seals and others in the Special Warfare community.”
But as Vox notes, allowing one servicemember to disobey a direct order opens the proverbial barn door, which would allow every military member to do the same, and that would lead to chaos and total anarchy in the armed forces. Does that sound like it would be conducive to an orderly and strong military?
Alito’s dissent is also directly in conflict with prior decisions on matters of orders and the military:
As the Supreme Court held in Goldman v. Weinberger (1986), “the essence of military service ‘is the subordination of the desires and interests of the individual to the needs of the service.’”
Surprisingly, it was Justice Brett Kavanaugh who provided the perfect counterbalance to Alito, Thomas, and Gorsuch.
The Constitution is very clear about who is at the top of that chain. It says, in unambiguous terms, that “the President shall be commander in chief of the Army and Navy of the United States.”
