More than 8,000 service members who were booted from the military or who left on their own over the COVID-19 vaccine could get full back pay and benefits if they seek to be reinstated in the military, according to an executive order signed Monday night by President Donald Trump.
Hayden Robichaux, who was separated from the Marine Corps in February 2022 for refusing the vaccine, said Trump’s executive order is a blessing for troops who had to take low paying jobs after being separated from the military for refusing to get vaccinated.
“Some people, frankly, got out hopeless and didn’t have a support system like I had,” Robichaux, who reenlisted in the Reserves in December 2023, told Task & Purpose. “I was able to hop right into a fantastic career job. But a lot of people didn’t have that opportunity. A lot of people had go to a McDonald’s job or working at a tire shop. They had a career and then that career got taken away from them because of a decision that they made for themselves.”
The order builds on rules adopted in 2023 that let troops previously kicked out to return to uniform. But few have, with no promises of back pay or benefits. A total of 1,903 soldiers, 1,878 sailors, 3,748 Marines, and 671 airmen were separated for refusing the COVID-19 vaccine, service officials told Task & Purpose on Monday. Of those troops, only 73 soldiers, 25 Marines, 13 airmen, and two sailors have returned to the military.
The new order also covers troops who left the military voluntarily because of the vaccine. It was unclear if troops who left on their own, rather than being kicked out, would be eligible for back pay, benefits, bonus payments or compensation.
Research on COVID-19 vaccines by a wide range of medical labs and disease researchers has routinely found that the COVID vaccines used in the U.S. are safe, with side-effects similar to other widely used vaccines and effectively reduce deaths and serious illness from COVID-19 infections. Serious complications from the vaccines, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, have been reported at rates at or below 10 cases in every one million doses.
Seperation over religious objections
Former Green Beret John Frankman left the Army as a captain when he believed he would be denied a vaccine waiver on religious grounds.
“I’m very grateful the EO [executive order] includes not just those kicked out, but those who voluntarily separated due to hardship from the vaccine mandate,” Frankman told Task & Purpose on Tuesday. “Any complete solution will require accountability and hopefully one day those leaders who pushed this illegal mandate are held accountable.”
Speaking to reporters on Monday, recently confirmed Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said the Pentagon supports Trump’s executive order on reinstating troops separated due to the mandatory COVID-19 vaccine program and the president’s other directives to the military.
“As the secretary of defense, it’s an honor to salute smartly, as I did as a junior officer and now as the secretary of defense, to ensure these orders are complied with rapidly and quickly,” Hegseth said.
The Defense Department’s COVID-19 vaccination was initially voluntary, but in August 2021 then-Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin required all troops to get vaccinated.
But the Defense Department’s requirement that troops get a COVID-19 vaccine ran into strong opposition from conservative lawmakers, and in December 2022 Congress ended the mandatory vaccination program. In Jan. 2023, Austin ordered the military branches to remove any adverse actions from the records of service members who refused the vaccine on religious or medical grounds.
The Army, which was facing a recruiting crisis at the time, sent letters later that year to former soldiers who had been separated due to the mandatory vaccine policy about how they could reenlist.
Frankman told Task & Purpose that he is not currently considering returning to the Army.
“I’m grateful for the EO but still believe God is guiding me elsewhere at this time,” Frankman said.
Had it not been for the COVID-19 vaccine mandate, Frankman would have made the Army his career, he said.
Frankman said he submitted a request for a religious exemption to the vaccine policy, but after waiting for about a year without getting a response, he assumed it would ultimately be denied, so he left the service rather than risk an other-than-honorable discharge.
While his religious exemption request was pending, Frankman was unable to deploy as a detachment commander, and he missed a chance to attend graduate school, he said.
Frankman said he objected to the vaccine mandate on religious grounds because fetal cell lines from abortions carried out in 1973 and 1985 were used to develop the vaccines.
The vaccines themselves did not contain aborted fetal cells, and none of the fetal cells used to develop the COVID-19 vaccines came from recent abortions, according to UCLA Health, a public healthcare system affiliated with the University of California, Los Angeles.
Still, Frankman, who spent four years at seminary to become a priest, said that he believed getting vaccinated for COVID would violate his Catholic faith by liking him “to the murder of an unborn child and the theft of its body parts.”
He also said he was unaware at the time that fetal cells were used to develop more than a dozen other vaccines that troops are required to get, including rubella, chickenpox, and Hepatitis A. Frankman is now skeptical on whether those vaccines are necessary.
Frankman said those service members who were forced out because they refused to get vaccinated for COVID-19 must decide for themselves whether to return, but he added that “some of them need to go back in, in order to provide the proper character” for the military.
“We do need good men and women to serve within the military,” Frankman said. “The way the military goes, the way the country goes.”
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