“There’s a whole industry telling people how to game the exemption,” Reiss says.Īdvice about how to claim a religious exemption is typically based on the notion that such exemptions are required by law and that those claims can’t be questioned. John Bel Edwards reimposed a statewide mandate that masks be worn indoors. Landry made his statement only hours before Democratic Gov. I support your religious liberties and right to conscientiously object.” Jeff Landry placed his authority behind religious exemptions in August, telling residents that “Louisiana law offers broad and robust protections for students’ and parents’ religious and philosophical objections to certain state public health policies. Right-wing Tennessee Pastor Greg Locke told his congregation in May that if any of them were threatened with termination by an employer for refusing a vaccine, “I can write you a religious exemption and we will sue their stinkin’ pants off!” (Recently, Locke was permanently banned from Twitter for purveying COVID-19 misinformation.) Megachurch Pastor Greg Fairrington has also provided his followers with a letter attesting to their “sincere belief.” Fairrington told my colleague Robin Estrin that his Sacramento-area church has received “thousands of phone calls from doctors, nurses, educators and first responders, in tears, fearing that their livelihoods hang in the balance because of their religious convictions.”Ī church group in Washington state has been holding seminars around that state to help people seek religious accommodation. But the rules have encouraged thousands to get vaccinated. So far, not very many workers have quit their jobs over COVID-19 vaccine requirements. Forms are also being offered by 412 Murrieta, an evangelical church in Riverside County.īusiness Column: Few have quit their jobs over COVID-19 vaccine mandates, but thousands have gotten shots So does Tulsa evangelical pastor Jackson Lahmeyer, who has made the quest for religious exemptions a feature of his campaign for the GOP nomination in Oklahoma for a U.S. The Christian legal aid group Liberty Counsel offers letter templates to send to employers or others mandating vaccination to claim a religious exemption. Interest in the exemptions has increased as vaccination mandates get tighter, especially for healthcare workers, as escape clauses such as regular COVID testing are eliminated and vaccine refusers are threatened with firings. Sites sponsored by churches, religious groups and politicians have sprung up across the web advising followers how to apply. In the era of COVID, there’s a burgeoning market in religious exemptions. In a 2014 survey of statements published on anti-vaccine websites, Dorit Rubinstein Reiss of UC Hastings College of the Law found numerous examples in which objectors “openly state they lie about religion.”Īmong them were comments expressing concerns about vaccine safety, “with the religious argument being used as a way to evade the obligation to vaccinate” some that advocated claiming to follow a religion that was not their own, or even creating a fake religion and some in which the writers openly admitted lying. There are no empirical statistics for how many vaccine objectors cite religion, or how many who do so actually believe their own claims. Religious exemptions have emerged as a dangerous and easily exploited loophole in vaccination policy. You may occasionally receive promotional content from the Los Angeles Times.įor all those reasons, religious exemptions have been experiencing a moment in the spotlight as a means of dodging vaccination mandates during this pandemic.
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