Petition for rehearing en banc; First Amendment & Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) challenges to the U.S. Air Force’s vaccine mandate; “Strict scrutiny”; Applicability of an “abstention test” to the RFRA claim; Mindes v Seaman (5th Cir); Scope of an injunction; Class certification; FedRCivP 23

In an order, the court denied a petition for rehearing and rehearing en banc of an opinion (see e-Journal # 78546 in the 12/19/22 edition) regarding an Air Force COVID-19 vaccine mandate. The court noted that the petition did not seek review of the issues the panel’s opinion decided and instead sought to have the opinion and the preliminary injunctions vacated based on subsequent mooting of the appeal and injunctions. The original panel reviewed the petition for panel rehearing and “concluded that the district court should review this mootness question in the first instance.” It further determined “that, even if the preliminary injunctions were now moot, that fact would not provide a basis for the ‘extraordinary remedy of vacatur’ of the panel’s opinion.” The petition was then “circulated to the full court. Less than a majority of the judges voted in favor of rehearing en banc.”