What constitutes a sincerely held religious belief for vaccine mandate purposes?

In Northern California, the pastor of a mega-church is distributing religious exemptions to the faithful. A New Mexico state senator will “help you formulate a religious exemption” by pointing out the decades of use of aborted fetal cells in the development of some vaccines. And a Texas-based evangelist offers everyone a release letter for a suggested “donation” of $ 25 or more.

With vaccination mandates imminent in the workplace, opponents are turning to a proven method to avoid COVID-19 vaccination: claiming that vaccination affects religious beliefs.

No large religious community is against vaccination. Even the Christian Scientific Church, whose followers rely on prayer rather than medicine, do not prescribe any official policy. It advises “respect for public health authorities and scrupulous obedience to the laws of the country, including those that require vaccination”.

And if a person claims that their private religious beliefs prohibit vaccination, that defense is unlikely to stand up in court if challenged, legal experts say. Although individual clergymen have boarded the anti-vaccine train, they have no obvious justification in religious texts for their positions. Many seem willing to take care of people who refuse to be vaccinated for any other reason.

Nonetheless, the US Equal Opportunities Commission allows a great deal of leeway for sincere religious beliefs. As a result, some experts predict that most employers and administrators will not want to challenge such objections from their employees.

“I have a feeling that not many people want to fight on this issue,” said Dr. John Swartzberg, infectious disease expert and professor at the University of California-Berkeley.

The full approval of the Pfizer BioNTech vaccine by the Food and Drug Administration on Aug. 23 could escalate the matter. Many government agencies, health care providers, colleges and the military had waited for the move before enforcing mandates.

In Dallas-Fort Worth, the major health systems were the first to implement mandates that gave workers time to get injections by the end of this month. The Liberation Question is already a battleground as Liberty Counsel threatens to sue Methodist Health System for denying at least four workers religious exemptions.

Health care

The Religious Freedom Group targets the Methodist Health System’s vaccination mandate

Religious freedom group Liberty Counsel says the Dallas-based Methodist Health System illegally denied employees exemptions from its company-wide vaccine mandate when it turned down multiple requests. Florida-based Liberty Counsel, who has become an ardent objector to mandatory COVID-19 vaccinations, said the vaccines all have links to aborted fetal cells and because of this, anyone with religious objections should be granted an exemption.

California, which abolished non-medical child vaccination exemptions in 2015, has pioneered COVID vaccine mandates. The July 26 order by Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom that government employees and health workers be fully vaccinated or undergo weekly tests was the first of its kind, as was a similar August 11 statement to all teachers and staff both on public as well as private schools. California State University’s 23-campus system has joined UC to require vaccination for all students and employees, and companies like Google, Facebook, and Twitter have announced mandatory vaccination records for employees returning to their offices.

The University of California requires proof of vaccination from all staff and students in its 10 locations, a decision that could affect half a million people. But like many other companies, it has room for those who wish to apply for an exemption “for medical, disabled or religious reasons” and adds that it is required by law.

Nothing in history suggests that large numbers of students or staff will conduct such a search – but no previous conversation about vaccines has been as openly politicized as that of COVID.

“This country will give mandates. It’s easy. Every other alternative was tried, ”said Dr. Monica Gandhi, Infectious Disease Expert at UC-San Francisco. “This phrase ‘Religious Liberation’ is very big. But in the current climate – amid a massive health crisis with a working vaccine – it will be quite difficult to just drop such religious claims.

While pop-up anti-vaccine churches have long offered reluctant parents options to exempt their children from vaccination, churches, internet-based religious corporations, and others seem to be offering massive amounts of COVID vaccination exemptions these days.

Dr. Gregg Schmedes, a Republican Senator and ENT doctor in New Mexico, used an Aug. 19 post on Facebook to direct health care workers “religiously believing that abortion is immoral” to a website attempting to do that Using aborted cells to catalog fetuses to test or manufacture various COVID vaccines. A vaccine sold in the United States, the product of Johnson & Johnson, is made using a cell culture derived in part from retinal cells from a 1985 aborted fetus.

However, the Vatican considers it “morally acceptable” to receive a COVID vaccination. In fact, Pope Francis declared it “the moral choice because it is about your life, but also about the life of others”. In an increasing number of dioceses – including Chicago, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, and New York – bishops have instructed priests and deacons not to sign a letter imprimaturing a request for religious exception.

Schmedes did not respond to questions from KHN by e-mail.

In the city of Rocklin, Sacramento area, a church that openly refused to oppose Newsom’s orders to shut down COVID last year handed out hundreds of exception notices. Greg Fairrington, pastor of Destiny Christian Church, told church attendants, “Nobody should be able to make it mandatory to have a vaccine or you will lose your job. That’s just not right here in America. “

The EEOC guidelines suggest that employers make “reasonable accommodation” against those who have sincere religious objections to a workplace regime. That can mean moving an unvaccinated worker to an isolated part of the office or moving from a forward-facing position to a position with less interpersonal contact. However, the employer does not have to do anything that leads to undue hardship or more than “minor” costs.

As for the objection itself, the Commission’s advice is vague. Employers “should normally assume that a worker’s application for religious placement is based on genuine religious belief,” says the EEOC. Employers have the right to ask for evidence, but employees’ religious beliefs need not be bound by any particular or organized belief.

The distinction between religion and ideology becomes blurred with those who request exceptions. In Turlock, Calif., A preschool teacher received a release letter from her pastor offering the documents to those who believed that taking a vaccine was “morally compromising.”

When asked via direct message from KHN why she requested the exemption, the woman said she was uncomfortable because she was being vaccinated because “the vaccine is in,” then added, “Personally, I’m over ‘COVID ‘and the controls that the government is trying to put over us! ”Like other exemption seekers, even those who have posted on Facebook anti-vaccine groups, she feared that other people would know that she had requested leave.

A surgical technician from Dignity Health, who has ordered her employees to be fully vaccinated by Nov. 1, said she expected a response from the company’s human resources department to her request for a religious exemption. She freely explained her reasons for applying by referring to two scriptures and listing vaccine ingredients that she believed were “harmful to the human body.” But she didn’t want anyone to know that she had applied for the religious exception.

A state’s right to request vaccination has been governed by law since a 1905 Supreme Court ruling that upheld smallpox vaccination in Massachusetts. Legal experts say the law has been upheld repeatedly, including a 1990 Supreme Court ruling that religiously motivated acts are not isolated from law unless a law highlights religion as a disadvantage. In August, Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett declined a challenge to Indiana University’s requirement to vaccinate all students, staff and faculty without comment.

“Under current law, it is clear that no religious exception is required,” Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the law school at UC-Berkeley, told KHN.

Of course, that doesn’t stop people from looking for one.

This story was written by Mark Kreidler of Kaiser Health News, the publisher of California Healthline, an editorially independent service of the California Health Care Foundation.

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