RELIGIOUS EXEMPTIONS SERIES: PART 2

See Written Instructions below under the video

RELIGIOUS EXEMPTIONS SERIES: PART 2 – THE LAW PROTECTS YOUR CONSCIENCE
(Written by Harry Mihet from https://lc.org/)

All though there are some exceptions, generally speaking, employers and schools are prohibited by federal and state laws from discriminating against employees or students on the basis of religion. This means that employers and schools are generally legally obligated to provide reasonable accommodations for employees and students whose sincerely held religious beliefs prohibit them from complying with a rule or directive unless the employer or school cannot provide any such accommodation without undue burden.

Employers and schools are already providing reasonable accommodations for employees and students with MEDICAL exemptions, such as allowing them to continue to implement the same safety precautions that were argued to be effective before vaccines were available (social distancing, masking indoors, testing, self-certification of symptoms, etc).

Thus, employers and schools will be hard-pressed to say that they cannot also accommodate those with sincere religious beliefs against abortion-derived vaccines. They MUST consider religious exemption requests, and grand them when properly made.

Granting MEDICAL exemptions but not RELIGIOUS exemptions amounts to illegal religious discrimination against employees or students.

FOUR KEY POINTS about religious beliefs that are entitled to legal protection:

• Your religious beliefs must be SINCERE. This means that you actually believe what you claim to believe. You’re not making it up just to avoid a rule or directive (in this case, the vaccine). The information that I am providing in this series is intended only for those with SINCERE religious beliefs that God prohibits them from taking COVID vaccines (because they originate in abortion, or for some other reason).
• Your religious beliefs do NOT have to be “reasonable” or “correct” or “valid” or “proper” or “acceptable” or “good”, or ANYTHING ELSE other than SINCERE. No government, and no employer or school, has the right to tell you what you “SHOULD” believe, or that what you believe is not “OK”. Once you have demonstrated that your religious belief is SINCERE (that youre not making it up), your employer or school cannot deny you a religious exemption because they don’t like or agree with YOUR belief.
• Your religious beliefs do NOT have to be “popular”. You are entitled to an exemption even if you are the last and only person on earth that believes that abortion-derived vaccines are against God’s law against murder. Incidentally, there are many, many people who believe like you. But legally, that does not matter. You have the right to your own, personal, individual, God-given conscience.
• Finally, and related to point #3, your religious beliefs do NOT have to be part of the doctrine or tenents of an “established religion”, whatever that is. THERE IS ROOM FOR REASONABLE DISAGREEMENT AMONG CHRISTIANS (and other faiths) on the moral and religious acceptability of COVID vaccines. You can be part of a church where reasonable Christians disagree on the topic of abortion-derived vaccines, and where the church itself has not taken a position, or worse, has approved of such vaccines. Legally, that does not matter. As indicated in point #3, you have the right to your own, personal, individual, God-given conscience.

(For this reason, this series of posts is NOT intended to stir debate among people of faith, but only to help those with sincere religious convictions against abortion-derived vaccines).

Know that you cannot be lawfully denied an exemption because you don’t have a letter from a pastor or church “approving” of YOUR beliefs.

It would be impossible to cover all of the various issues and nuances of the law on religious exemptions, but the basics are above.

The bottom line is that you are NOT a legal orphan. The law in the United States of America STILL protects your right to a clean conscience. (PRAISE GOD FOR THAT).