‘Many schools, businesses and governments requiring vaccination have offered religious exemptions. Some are loath to challenge people’s claims that getting the shot goes against their beliefs for fear of being sued, but organizations have come up with a variety of ways to assess claimants’ sincerity. But the legal basis of Americans’ supposed right to a religious exemption to vaccination is less clear than such policies’ popularity would suggest.
‘As a lawyer and scholar who focuses on religious liberties, I have supported religious exemptions for a baker who refused to create a cake for a same-sex wedding, a family-owned business that refused to provide emergency contraception to its employees, a Muslim prisoner who was obligated to grow a beard and many others.
‘Even so, I believe that under the general law of religious liberty – including the Constitution and state and federal religious freedom laws – the government has an easy case to refuse religious exemptions from vaccines against infectious disease.’
Read here (Religious News Service, Sept 15, 2021)
