Watchdog Group Calls Out Biden Administration’s Religious Exemption Tracking System

[Michie]

COMMENTARY: Legal scholars at the Heritage Institute’s Meese Center are reminding the Biden administration of its duty to recognize and protect conscience rights in the federal workplace.


Should federal workers and contractors be worried that the Biden administration is tracking everyone who asks for a religious exemption for the COVID-19 vaccinations? One watchdog group thinks they should.

At the beginning of this year, Sarah Parshall Perry and GianCarlo Canaparo, legal scholars at the Heritage Foundation’s Meese Center, noticed that the Pretrial Services Agency for the District of Columbia had created something called the “Employee Religious Exception Request Information System.”

According to PSA’s announcement in the Federal Register, the system would maintain “personal religious information collected in response to religious accommodation requests for religious exception from the federally mandated vaccination requirement in the context of a public health emergency or similar health and safety incident.”

Continued below.
Watchdog Group Calls Out Biden Administration’s Religious Exemption Tracking System

 

[Praying Rose]

Disturbing, but not surprising. If pushed, they will get rid of the official lists. Hidden lists may always persist, though, and those listed might expect vague but continued difficulties in promoting or transferring, depending on the politics of their agency.