Work With What You Have-Navigating Religious Accommodations in the American Vaccine Era

Pandemic-response regulations in the United States have become increasingly reliant on the COVID-19 vaccine in curbing the spread of the virus—so much so that many states have implemented targeted regulations mandating vaccinations for employees working in high-risk settings, such as hospitals and long-term care facilities. The regulations implemented in New York, Maine, and Rhode Island proved to be the most controversial and legally significant, insofar as they seemingly did not provide for religious exemptions.1 Groups of religious healthcare workers swiftly initiated various lawsuits, charging that the vaccine mandates circumvented well-established antidiscrimination rights under federal law. In each case, federal courts were asked to decide whether these state mandates, by failing to account for religious accommodations, worked to preclude certain antidiscrimination rights created by Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.2 Title VII has long required covered employers to provide, upon an employee’s request, reasonable accommodations for said employee’s “sincerely held religious beliefs,” so long as such accommodations would not pose an “undue hardship” on the employer.3 The federal courts, however, declined to intervene.4 Indeed, each of these three regulations withstood their respective challenges and have been permitted by the courts, including the U.S. Supreme Court, to take effect. These regulations were not invalidated, but were found rather to exist subject to Title VII. Thus, employers are still required to provide, in the absence of certain exceptions, reasonable accommodations to an employee’s sincerely held religious beliefs. In effect, the courts have neither guaranteed nor erased religious exemptions to vaccine mandates, but have rather referred religious objectors back to Title VII and the decades-long principles and balancing tests developed thereunder.

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