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Page Number: 5.0

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AUSTIN v. U. S. NAVY SEALS 1–26 

ALITO, J., dissenting 

described  by  the  District  Court,  was  largely  “theater”  de-
signed to result in the denial of almost all requests.  U. S. 
Navy  Seals  1–26  v.  Biden,  ___  F. Supp.  3d___  (ND  Tex. 
2022), App. to Application for Partial Stay 31a (App.).

The exemption procedure that the Navy set up included 
no fewer than 50 steps, and during the first 35 steps, none
of the various officials who processed requests gave any con-
sideration to their merit.  Decl. of A. Stephens, Exh. 1, ECF 
Doc. 62, at 10–26.  Instead, a form letter rejecting each re-
quest  was  prepared  and  sent  to  seven  offices  for  review. 
App. 40a.2  A package of rejection letters was then assem-
bled,  together  with  a  memo  asking  the  vice  admiral  who
served as a deputy chief of naval operations to sign the re-
jection letters.  Ibid.  Only at step 35 was someone in this
chain  told  to  read  the  exemption  requests,  but  it  appears
that this individual was not given an opportunity to recom-
mend  that  a  request  be  granted.  See  ECF  Doc.  62,  at  7. 
Instead, this person’s sole task was to record pertinent in-
formation on a spreadsheet and send the package on to the 
vice admiral.  Id., at 7–8. 

Given  the  nature  of  this  procedure,  the  results  it  pro-
duced  are  not  surprising.    Although  more  than  4,000  ex-
emption  requests  had  been  submitted  by  February  15,
2022,  not  a  single  one  had  been  approved  when  the  com-
plaint  in  this  case  was  filed.   See  Application  for  Partial
Stay 9, and n. 3 (Application) (citing ECF Doc. 129, at 16, 
n. 2 (Feb. 23, 2022)).

Respondents are among the many recipients of form re-
jection letters, and according to their declarations and tes-
timony, some of them were told outright that pressing for a 

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2 Both the District Court and the Court of Appeals concluded based on 
the record that the Navy did not have a template for approving an ex-
emption. See U. S. Navy Seals v. Biden, 27 F. 4th 336, ___ (CA5 2022) 
(per curiam), App. 6a; id., at 40a.  In the Reply filed in this Court, the 
Solicitor  General  claims  that  there  was  an  approval  template,  Reply 
Brief 12, n. 6, but no such document been supplied to this Court.