Sponsor
Tom Barrett
Representative · R-MI
Representative · R-MI
Official title: To require the Secretary of Defense to conduct a study on members of the Armed Forces who separated from the Armed Forces due to the mandate to receive the COVID-19 vaccine and the transfer of education benefits by such members, and for other purposes.
Introduced May 29, 2026 by Tom Barrett · Last progress May 29, 2026
The bill increases transparency and could enable earlier education benefits for dependents, but it raises privacy risks for service members and modest administrative and potential taxpayer costs if recommendations lead to benefit expansions.
Service members, veterans, and taxpayers will get clearer, disaggregated documentation of separations tied to vaccine refusal (including religious-exemption denials and discharge characterizations), improving oversight, record accuracy, and public transparency.
Dependents (spouses/children) of affected service members could gain earlier access to education benefits if policymakers act on the report's budget analysis and recommendations.
Service members and their families may face privacy and reputational risks because publicly reported, disaggregated data and discharge characterizations could make individuals identifiable.
Taxpayers could incur increased costs if the report prompts expansion of education benefits without legislative budget offsets.
The Department of Defense will incur additional administrative and staff costs to prepare the required study and disaggregated reporting.
Based on analysis of 2 sections of legislative text.
Requires DoD to study and report on service members separated for refusing a COVID-19 vaccine (Aug 24, 2021–Jan 10, 2023) and on related transfers of education benefits, with a budgetary impact analysis and recommendations.
Requires the Secretary of Defense to study and report within 180 days on service members separated between August 24, 2021 and January 10, 2023 solely for refusing a COVID-19 vaccine, and on transfers of their education benefits to dependents. The report must include counts, exemption denial data, transfer timing and eligibility details, a budgetary impact analysis of allowing dependents to use transferred benefits regardless of the transferor’s completed service, disaggregated data by service/component/grade/years of service/discharge characterization, and recommendations; the Department must publish the report on its website within 60 days of submission.