However, employers cannot discriminate in favor of organized religions and hence aren’t allowed to request letters from clergy or priests as proof. “You can ask them a tough question to gauge sincerity.” “You can’t try and assess if the belief is rational,” Reiss clarified. In other words, it is on them to assess the sincerity of the belief, not the accuracy or validity.Įmployers can require their employees to explain the basis of their belief in detail and don't need to accept a cursory attestation to grant the exemption, Reiss said. In the face of a religious exemption application, employers or schools have the right to probe the exemption and question the applicant. In the wake of the 2019 measles outbreak in the states of New York and Washington, where most cases were reported among the unvaccinated, the states eliminated religious exemptions. However, as seen in some states, this right can be overruled in the interest of public health. Individuals’ rights to claim a religious exemption from immunization is protected under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. “You can’t just grab onto a biblical verse when it’s convenient,” Reiss, who has written about the legality of vaccine mandates in law journals, said. Unlike personal belief exemptions, which are relatively broad, religious exemptions have to be integrated into a holistic belief system, said Dorit Reiss, a professor of law at UC Hastings College of the Law. “One thing that people have done previously has shown that the harder it is to obtain an exemption, the lower the rate of exemptions becomes,” he added.
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