Lawyers receive surge of calls from soldiers not wanting to get COVID-19 vaccination

In the wake of the Pentagon seeking to make the COVID-19 vaccination mandatory for military service members, lawyers in law offices across the country say they have experienced a surge in calls from service members looking for options if they don't want to get vaccinated.

CNN spoke with five law firms that focus on military law about the surge in calls, including the law office of Joseph Jordan in Killeen, Texas.

"It's been the number one issue for our law firm for the last few days," Jordan told CNN. "I'm getting emails, I'm getting messages on my Facebook, we're getting phone calls. It's been absolutely nuts. Three or four calls an hour."

"The questions aren't coming from the young enlisted. They're coming from the seniors, they're coming from the midlevel ranks," Jordan said. "I talked to a guy with 31 years in the service, and he asked, 'Do I need to retire now?'"

The surge in calls comes after Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin announced on Monday that he would be seeking to make the vaccine mandatory by mid-September even if no full approval from the US Food and Drug Administration had been received yet, according to CNN.

In a law firm based in Colombia, Maryland, Joseph Owens, a lawyer who served in the US Army's Judge Advocate General's Corps, told CNN that his firm has received dozens of calls since the announcement.

"The soldiers who have talked to me, I've experienced a lot of anger," said Owens.

"For Owens, the question revolves around whether it is a lawful order to compel service members to receive the Covid-19 vaccine," wrote CNN.

To answer that question, Owens said that he would be looking into the decision-making process and legal considerations that went into the decision to mandate the vaccine.

"Any procedural missteps in testing, authorizing, or administering the vaccine, he says, could make it an unlawful order," said CNN.

"I think there's a very good argument that the answer is no, it's not a lawful order," Owens said.

Owens added that the service members "want more data before they put a chemical in their body."

Jordan noted the potential difficulty of challenging a mandatory order to get vaccinated.

"You may not have a leg to stand on as it is, because you're looking at what is in the best interest of the service and your duty to your country," he said.

In a draft warning order obtained by CNN from a West Coast Army base, they outline a detailed plan to issue vaccinations across the facility. The warning order states that the date the vaccine becomes mandatory will be called "V-Day," short for vaccination day.

"Given uncertainty with regard to potential FDA approval date, V-Day could occur with less than 7 days notice," the order states.

With the high potential for the vaccine to become mandatory, it joins a list of up to 17 vaccines that are mandatory for troops depending on where they are deployed or based at.

Those that refuse the current mandatory vaccines face a wide array of disciplinary actions, including discharge from he military.

According to Pentagon press secretary John Kirby, he said on Wednesday that commanders would have a "range of tools" to work with those who refuse the vaccine that do not rely on disciplinary measures, adding that "once a vaccine has been mandated, it becomes a lawful order to compel an individual to take the vaccine."

"Our expectation is that if an individual doesn't want to take the vaccine that we're going to provide them some counseling," said Kirby at a press briefing Wednesday, including "access to doctors, access to leaders in their chain of command so they fully understand the implications and repercussions to them if they don't take the vaccine."

Kirby added that there could be religious or medical exemptions from receiving the vaccine on a case-by-case basis.