Handling Employee Religious Objections To Mandatory Vaccine Policies

• Published date: 05 October 2021
• Subject Matter: Employment and HR, Discrimination, Disability & Sexual Harassment, Health & Safety
• Law Firm: Kane Russell Coleman Logan
• Author: Ms Alexandra Beverly, Andrea Johnson and Dennis Duffy

Mandatory Employee Vaccination Rules Present Challenges when Considering Religious Exceptions to the Rule.

As we reported earlier (see the KRCL blog post, here), the Occupational Safety and Health Administration ("OSHA") is in the process of developing an "emergency" temporary standard, requiring employers with more than 100 employees to mandate that their employees be fully vaccinated or, if the employee is excused from the mandate, to produce a negative COVID-19 test at least once per week. Although it is not clear when OSHA's temporary rule will be issued (and there will likely be several state challenges to the anticipated rule), a number of employers are already implementing mandatory vaccine policies in the workplace.

Accommodations from the Vaccine Mandate?

Whether an employer decides to have a mandatory vaccine policy (or is required to do so by OSHA), it will have to manage employee requests to be excused for those requirements. A doctor's note for an exception for medical reasons may be one way an employee seeks to get around a vaccination rule, and experienced human resources professionals generally have a considerable understanding of dealing with the accommodation rules under the Americans with Disabilities Act.² The more difficult consideration may be, however, that there is an increasing number of employees objecting to vaccine mandates on religious grounds, and most employers are less familiar with the rules on this ground.

The Basis for a Religious Accommodation

Under Title VII, an employer must provide reasonable accommodation of an applicant's or employee's sincerely held religious beliefs or practices - or lack thereof, if an accommodation will not impose more than a de minimis cost or burden on the employer's business operation.

The EEOC Guidance states that employers should accept (and accommodate) an employee's claim of a sincerely held religious belief unless the employer has an objective basis to deny the exemption.³

The EEOC defines "religion" broadly. Therefore, an employer must reasonably accommodate not just employees who belong to traditional, organized religions (such as Christianity, Judaism, Islam, or Buddhism), but also those that have beliefs that are new, uncommon, not part of a formal church or sect, only subscribed to by a small number of people, or which may seem illogical or unreasonable. Also, the EEOC has stated that the religious belief or practice engaged in by the employee may be protected, even if the...