Limited Religious Exemptions From Vaccine Mandate Challenged

Suit was filed this week in a Colorado federal district court challenging provisions limiting religious exemptions from the University of Colorado Medical School's vaccine mandate.

There have been various lawsuits against vaccination requirements. I will briefly talk about this one. The opening of the complaint has this:

The University of Colorado has enacted a Policy dividing its staff and students into two categories based on their religious beliefs: the “sheep,” whose religions teach the approved orthodoxy, receive exemptions to the University’s COVID vaccine mandate, while the “goats,” who hold non-approved religious beliefs, are denied exemptions and then fired or expelled.

Uh huh. Those who get vaccinated are now the "sheep" who just follow the "approved orthodoxy." It is not enough to request a religious exemption. One has to insult the majority.  This doesn't come off as neutral.

The challengers, including at least one M.D., are "devout" such and such. Yes, well, we wouldn't want to protect the religious liberty of believers who are not, right?  For instance, one Jane Doe here is a "devout Catholic."  The Catholic Church has not only decided taking a COVID vaccine is morally acceptable, but the Pope himself has spoken of a "moral duty" to do so.  The Vatican has a vaccine mandate though allows a negative COVID test.

The concern for some is that decades ago the vaccine was developed by using aborted fetal cells.  The Catholic Church is sure to denounce this in general, but balancing moral equities, accepts the use of the vaccine until there is a good alternative.  Others can try to figure out the moral balancing involved here when fetal cells developed from a long ago abortion (it is not like the abortion was done to get the cells) is forbidden in this fashion. The artificial purity when a much more direct relation with "evil" will surely be practiced given the level of indirect relationship involved here.  

[The complaint notes that there is some Catholic support for the idea that you cannot mandate vaccination.  But, vaccination is not being mandated here except to the degree that you need to be vaccinated for a specific place, a medical school.  That is a special place where more specific burdens are appropriate.]  

The Buddhist involved opposes all vaccines, noting that the creation of some involved harm to animals.  This is not the only reason for the opposition, perhaps again realizing the number of ways we are somehow involved with the harm of animals in ways a lot more direct and/or significant than the use of a vaccine developed from animal testing. 

This complete opposition is helpful since the regulation -- shades of conscientious objection rules requiring opposition to all wars -- requires a sincere religious belief that opposes acceptance of “all immunizations” and vaccines.  I am not sure the two will overlap in all ways, but that seems a reasonable rule to avoid complex decision-making that can be subjective in specifics.  For instance, I'm not really convinced that the judge here made a good enough case that the people there was not "sincere." 

So, I'm wary of "sincere religious belief" tests in general, but that is working off common principles.  The second rule stated in the post, however troubles me.  There is a requirement that the person is "a member of an organized religion whose tenets include a hierarchically promulgated, authoritative position on the moral liceity of “all immunizations” and vaccines."  That is wrongful religious discrimination.

I talked about this in the past in reference to New York's rules for marriage officiants.  Without checking the exact specifics, there is some rule for a certain organizational structure that led to problems when the Universal Life Church got involved.  Putting aside the idea that might not be a "real" religion, whatever that term means must include religious beliefs that do not meet that requirement.  Individual religious beliefs, including those who disagree with their church's stance, are protected.

(You also can have no church.  Your religious beliefs can simply be a result of your own individual understanding of what God etc. requires of you.)

I understand the desire to avoid trying to go into the weeds of idiosyncratic religious beliefs that can seem to be makeweight in nature.  But, the rule favors some religions over others and does so by the very terms of the rule. It is not a favoring in effect.  It is a clear favoring of certain types of religion and religious belief.  There is a neutral reason for it, yes, but the Constitution bars certain categories of legislative tools.

This shows the value of a blanket rule against religious based vaccine exemptions.*  Vaccines are necessary for the safety of third parties.  A neutral across the board ban will avoid trying to determine what is "organized" and "hierarchical" enough and so forth.  A person is allowed to disagree with the position of their church.  A person's faith is no less to be respected in that situation.  Yes, it's harder to test sincerity, but you are just making somewhat different problems for yourself this way.  

I suppose those who wrote this regulation had some reason to think it was an appropriate one.  We would need to see the response to the complaint and so forth.  But, I am inclined to find the second part problematic, and avoidable.  

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* If you want to have religious exemptions, this at least is not the way to go.  A complete opposition of vaccinations very well might work, but it must include what a person's individual religious beliefs require.

Medical exemptions are separate since they are in place to protect the health of the individual.  This is the same overall concern of vaccination guidelines in general.  And, it is no absolute thing either -- if the condition will result in harm in third parties, the person can be disqualified from doing certain things. Finally, there will be hard calls, but parsing religious beliefs is specifically a problem under the First Amendment.