Here’s What Counts As A Religious Exemption Under The Vaccine Mandate

Last week, President Joe Biden unveiled a six-point plan to tackle the COVID-19 and recent surge. 

The plan includes an emergency order through the US Department of Labor requiring all companies with more than 100 employees to require vaccinations, impacting millions of American workers. 

While federal workers will no longer be able to opt out of getting their dose of the vaccine in place of weekly or regular testing, there is a religious exemption built into the new mandate. In accordance with the Americans with Disabilities Act and Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, the administration and companies must offer individuals who have disabilities and those with sincere religious beliefs that prevent them from getting the vaccine. 

So what counts as a “sincerely held” religious belief? 

Well, even if an individual is connected to a religious denomination that doesn’t outright oppose or prohibit vaccination, that person’s individual beliefs can still be considered valid, experts say. 

“It can be a personal, sincerely held religious belief which arises from the very nature of freedom and religion articulated in the First Amendment,” Domenique Camacho Moran, a New York-based labor attorney told CBS News.

In the past, employers have more often than not given employees who request religious exemption the benefit of the doubt. The high stakes of the COVID-19 pandemic, however, may lead some businesses to give such requests a further look. 

“The employer generally has to go with the idea that the employee’s request is based on their sincerely held religious belief,” Keith Wilkes, an employment attorney in Tulsa, Oklahoma, explained. “But if the employer has an objective basis for questioning its sincerity, the employer is justified to seek additional information." 

“It is always possible that a local church or temple does in fact espouse a view that vaccination is contrary to religious beliefs, so there is room for the employer to dig deeper on those sorts of requests,” Wilkes added. 

Employment lawyers say having written documentation of a person’s religious beliefs is recommended when making the exemption request, but it’s not guaranteed to be a straightforward process, especially now. A note from a religious leader, for example, might be required now especially as the number of new cases around the country rise.

Guidelines on how to handle exemptions have not been totally laid out by federal employment agencies, which may prolong the process overall, labor experts told the outlet.

Exemption requests made on the basis of a person having disabilities tends to go through a more clear-cut process, experts say, given medical history documentation provided by healthcare professionals on behalf of an individual.