“The exemption has been used in recent years to skirt the vaccine law, causing many schools to fall below the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s threshold of 95% needed for herd immunity against highly contagious diseases like Measles, Pertussis, Tetanus, and Meningitis, among others.”
– Vaccination Alliance of Connecticut, a coalition of public health officials, parents and others
In Connecticut, so many parents claimed religious exemption from mandatory childhood vaccinations during the 2019-20 school year that 120 schools failed to reach vaccination levels needed for herd immunity against measles.
Connecticut no longer allow a religious exemption from childhood immunization requirements for schools, colleges and day care facilities, becoming the sixth state to end that policy.
(Susan Haigh. “Connecticut Is 6th State to End Religious Vaccine Exemption.” U.S. News. Associated Press. April 28, 2021.)
The First Amendment’s right to exercise freedom of religion has been reviewed by the Supreme Court repeatedly (Employment Division vs. Smith and Fulton vs City of Philadelphia), and time and again, as law professor Erwin Chemerinsky explains, the prevailing opinion plainly states that “as long as a law is neutral, not motivated by a desire to interfere with religion and of general applicability to all individuals, it cannot be challenged based on free exercise of religion.”
Requiring students to be vaccinated is applying law to everyone and it is not motivated by religion, but rather by public health; it typifies a neutral law of general applicability. This is why several other states have already passed legislation excluding religious exemption for vaccines.
From Measles To COVID
What is the latest legal battlefield of the pandemic? The answer is “legal exemptions,” and particularly “religious exemptions.”
Americans opposed to the coronavirus vaccines are trying to find ways around employer and government vaccination mandates. This is new territory for many employers navigating the issue, given how risky a proposition it is to allow unvaccinated employees to mingle with, and possibly infect, colleagues in the workplace.
Murky Waters – Defining a Legal, “Religious Exemption”
Under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, individuals have the right to be free from discrimination on the basis of religion. As part of their religious beliefs, many individuals object to vaccines. Employers are required to accommodate religious observances and practices, unless doing so imposes an undue hardship on the business.
However, “religion” is very broadly defined and encompasses not only organized religions, but also informal beliefs. “Religion” under the law can also encompass non-theistic and moral beliefs.
For example, in Chenzira v. Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center, 2012 U.S. Dist. Lexis 182139 (S.D. Ohio, 2012), the court recognized that veganism, in some circumstances, may constitute a sincerely held religious belief. That court exempted an employee from a flu shot requirement.
No major religious denomination in the U.S. opposes vaccination outright. But an individual's "sincerely held" religious belief does not have to be part of an organized-religion mandate to be considered a valid reason for exemption from getting the vaccine.
"It can be a personal, sincerely held religious belief which arises from the very nature of freedom of religion articulated in the First Amendment," said Domenique Camacho Moran, a labor attorney at New York-based law firm Farrell Fritz.
"The employer generally has to go with the idea that the employee's request is based on their sincerely held religious belief. But if the employer has an objective basis for questioning its sincerity, the employer is justified to seek additional information," said Keith Wilkes, an employment attorney at Tulsa, Oklahoma-based firm Hall Estill.
(Megan Cerullo. “What constitutes a 'sincerely held' religious exemption to a vaccine mandate?” MoneyWatch. September 13, 2021.)
The rules around religious exemptions for coronavirus vaccines vary widely as each state or institution often has its own exemption forms for people to sign. A religious belief does not have to be recognized by an organized religion, and it can be new, unusual or “seem illogical or unreasonable to others,” according to rules laid out by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.
But such a belief can't be founded solely on political or social ideas. That puts employers in the position of determining what is a legitimate religious belief and what is a dodge. Employers must now try to distinguish between primarily political objections from people who may happen to be religious, and objections that are actually religious at their core – no easy task.
The rollout has prompted heated debates because of the longtime role that cell lines derived from fetal tissue have played, directly or indirectly, in the research and development of various vaccines and medicines.
Roman Catholic leaders in New Orleans and St. Louis went so far as to call Johnson & Johnson's COVID-19 shot “morally compromised." J&J has stressed that there is no fetal tissue in its vaccine.
Moreover, the Vatican’s doctrine office has said it is “morally acceptable” for Catholics to receive COVID-19 vaccines that are based on research that used cells derived from aborted fetuses. Pope Francis himself has said it would be “suicide” not to get the shot, and he has been fully vaccinated with the Pfizer formula.
(Colleen Long and Andew DeMillo. “As COVID-19 vaccine mandates rise, religious exemptions grow.” Raleigh News & Observer. Associated Press. September 17, 2021.)
Religious objections, once used sparingly around the country to get exempted from various required vaccines, are becoming a much more widely used loophole against the COVID-19 shot.
An estimated 2,600 Los Angeles Police Department employees are citing religious objections to try to get out of the required COVID-19 vaccination. In Washington state, thousands of state workers are seeking similar exemptions.
(Colleen Long and Andew DeMillo. “As COVID-19 vaccine mandates rise, religious exemptions grow.” Raleigh News & Observer. Associated Press. September 17, 2021.)
The Wild and Woolly Battle of Exemptions
Some evangelical pastors are reportedly providing religious exemption documents to members of their churches, and right-wing forums are sharing strategies to skirt vaccination requirements. Religious freedom groups are sending threatening letters to states, schools and employers and preparing legal challenges to fight vaccination mandates.
One pastor is reportedly encouraging people to donate to his Tulsa church so they can become an online member and get his signature on a religious exemption from coronavirus vaccine mandates. The pastor, Jackson Lahmeyer, is a 29-year-old small-business owner running in the Republican primary challenge to Sen. James Lankford in 2022.
Lahmeyer, who leads Sheridan Church with his wife, Kendra, said that in just two days, about 30,000 people have downloaded the religious exemption form he created.
“It’s beautiful,” he said. “My phone and my emails have blown up.”
Lahmeyer said he has not taken any of the three authorized coronavirus vaccines and believes they were created with aborted fetal tissue. (Developers of the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines used cell lines from aborted fetal tissue to test whether the vaccines worked, but the vaccines were not developed from the same cell lines. While the Johnson & Johnson vaccine used lab-replicated fetal cells during its production process, the vaccine does not contain any fetal cells.)
Lahmeyer said he is not anti-vaccine, but he has already had the virus and believes that people whoare infected with it can be treated with medications like ivermectin, which is used to treat parasites in humans and horses. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration says ivermectin should not be used to treat or prevent COVID-19.
(Sarah Pulliam Bailey. “This pastor will sign a religious exemption for vaccines if you donate to his church. The Washington Post. September 15, 2021.)
In Sacramento, California, a megachurch pastor is offering a letter to anyone who checks a box confirming the person is a “practicing Evangelical that adheres to the religious and moral principles outlined in the Holy Bible.” Greg Fairrington of Destiny Christian Church posts on social media about religious exemption letters have been viewed thousands of times. Destiny Christian draws more than 10,000 people between its online services and its Rocklin location.
(Robin Estrin. “Pastor offers exemption letters for COVID vaccination resisters.” Los Angeles Times. August 19, 2021.)
The Bottom Line
Much of the present resistance to COVID vaccines tends to be based not on formal teachings from an established faith leader, but a blend of online conspiracies and misinformation, conservative media and conversations with like-minded friends and family members.
Some organized churches – including small Christian churches such as Church of the First Born, End Time Ministries, Faith Assembly, Faith Tabernacle, and First Century Gospel Church – rely on faith healing. Others, such as the First Church of Christ and Scientist (Christian Scientist) believe in healing through prayer and that vaccines aren't necessary.
In general, many evangelicals remain resistant to vaccination. Some 24% of white evangelicals said in June 2021 they wouldn’t be vaccinated, down from 26% in March, according to a study from the Public Religion Research Institute, a nonpartisan group that studies the intersection of religion and public life.
Evangelicals of all races make up about one-quarter of the U.S. population, and health officials say persuading them to get the shot is crucial to slowing the spread of the Delta variant fueling recent increases in Covid-19 cases.
The reasons for White evangelicals rejecting or hesitating to get vaccinated against the coronavirus are complex and not necessarily tied to religious doctrine.
Exemption requests are testing the boundaries of the federal Civil Rights Act of 1964, which requires employers to provide reasonable accommodations for employees who object to work requirements based on religious beliefs that are “sincerely held.”
There is the rub – what is a “sincerely held” belief is an issue of individual credibility. The Supreme Court has never articulated a formal definition for religion. And, these things make it possible for anyone to circumvent the vaccine mandate.
How, exactly? In some states, the situation is more complicated. Most states explicitly authorize religious exemptions to vaccination, and sometimes philosophical exemptions as well – regardless of the government’s compelling interests.
Those state laws could not protect anyone from a federal vaccine mandate, and many of them only apply to certain groups – usually schoolchildren. But they could protect people from mandates from their state or local government.
So, what happens when the federal and state courts collide?
Douglas Laycock, Professor of Law at the University of Virginia, who has represented four clients in the Supreme Court who were seeking religious exemptions, writes …
“The Supreme Court’s current interpretation of the Constitution does not always require a compelling interest.
“Under the current law of the Constitution, people have no right to a religious exemption from a rule unless there is also a secular exception or gap in coverage that would undermine the government’s interests just as much. If there isn’t such a secular exception, the government doesn’t have to show any reason at all to refuse religious exemptions.
“Usually the only secular exception to vaccine requirements is for 'medical contraindications,' meaning that a vaccine would harm the recipient – for example, if someone is allergic to an ingredient in the vaccine.
“But these medical exceptions don’t undermine the government’s interest in saving lives, preventing serious illness or preserving hospital capacity. By avoiding medical complications, those exceptions actually serve the government’s interests.
“ … even when religious objections are sincere, the government has a compelling interest in overriding them and insisting that everyone be vaccinated. And that overrides any claim under state or federal constitutions or religious liberty legislation. It is irrelevant to state statutes that explicitly grant vaccine exemptions with no exceptions for compelling government interests. But federal vaccination requirements override those state laws.”
(Douglas Laycock. “What’s the law on vaccine exemptions? A religious liberty expert explains.” The Conversation. September 15, 2021.)
As for evangelical anti-vaxxers, they should be aware that prominent evangelical Christian leader Franklin Graham has repeatedly urged hesitant Americans to get vaccinated against COVID-19, warning that the pandemic is "not over" and that the novel coronavirus "could kill you."
"For me as a Christian, it's very easy for me to support the vaccine," Graham, the CEO of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association and of Samaritan's Purse, told CNN. "Because as a Christian, Jesus Christ came to this Earth to save life."
“I want people to know that COVID-19 can kill you," he continued. “But we have a vaccine out there that could possibly save your life. And if you wait, it could be too late.” Graham said that both he and his wife had gotten vaccinated.
(Morgan Gstalter. “Franklin Graham presses Christians: Get vaccine or 'it could be too late.'” The Hill. May 14, 2021.)
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