![]() A legal challenge to these practices could succeed under the circumstances outlined in this series.įor a more thorough analysis of this issue, please see the most recent draft of an upcoming article I authored on the subject: When Exemptions Discriminate: Unlawfully Narrow Religious Exemptions to Vaccination Mandates by Private Colleges and Universities, by Ronald J. But they cannot use unlawful means-religious discrimination-to achieve an otherwise legitimate objective, and that’s exactly what many have been doing. Understandably, school administrators want to avoid granting exemptions to students whose religious arguments against vaccination are pretextual. This raises contractual issues of good faith and fair dealing, but it would seem to limit the university’s potential exposure to liability on account of religious discrimination. ![]() Hofstra University recently informed its students that it will no longer be offering or honoring religious exemptions to its COVID-19 vaccination policy for the Spring 2022 semester-not even for those few students who were granted a religious exemption for the Fall 2021 semester. Perhaps some colleges are beginning to recognize this. Hence to reject that student’s request for a religious accommodation while granting the requests of other students constitutes unlawful religious discrimination. A Catholic student whose properly formed conscience leads him or her to conclude that the COVID-19 vaccine cannot be taken commits a very serious sin by taking the vaccine. School administrators either cannot understand, choose not to understand, or completely ignore the fact that opposition to the COVID-19 vaccine derived from these principles is just as religiously sincere and binding as any other religiously based objection to the vaccine. For some students (particularly Catholic students), opposition to the COVID-19 vaccine is grounded upon the concept of cooperation with evil (i.e., the original abortion from which the cell line used to develop the vaccine was derived or tested upon) and the religious obligations adhering to the exercise of one’s properly informed conscience.A school could not deny a Muslim student’s request for an exemption to one particular vaccine (perhaps because it was created with pork gelatin) while granting an exemption from that same vaccine to another student because that other student’s faith opposed all immunization as a rule. But that constitutes discrimination against a student whose religious beliefs preclude the receipt of only the particular vaccine being mandated. Some schools seem to be granting accommodations only to those students whose religious beliefs preclude the receipt of any and all vaccines.(Further, schools are not qualified to distinguish orthodoxy from heresy.) ![]() It is the student’s own religious beliefs that are paramount under antidiscrimination law-not those of any rabbi, imam, pastor, bishop, patriarch, or pope. Schools are not permitted to discriminate against heretics. That would make it exceedingly difficult for the student to secure the required letter.
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