The state of Oklahoma argued that naming the Guard members challenging the federal COVID vaccine mandate could expose them to a range of harms.
Highlights
- Oklahoma National Guard members can’t sue anonymously over COVID-19 vaccine mandate, judge rules.
- Governor, attorney general and 16 unnamed Guard members filed a lawsuit in December seeking to block the mandate.
- Judge rules that the public interest overrides concerns about privacy or personal safety.
- Guard members say they are willing to make their names known to the court and to the U.S.
- government defendants in the case.
- The state sought to keep confidential the identities of the Guard members in the lawsuit because, it argued, public knowledge of their names could expose them to a range of harms, including “reprisal, physical danger, and social and commercial denigration and ostracism.