Do vaccine mandates amount to religious discrimination? Inspired by this answer, do vaccine mandates amount to religious discrimination? Could a restaurant refuse to serve unvaccinated individuals, even including those with sincere religiously-founded anti-vax beliefs? What about if this mandate is just company policy, not legally required?
Do vaccine mandates amount to religious discrimination? The term &quot;vaccine mandate&quot; is not sufficiently clear to tell, in a vacuum. Is it a mandate to get a vaccine? A mandate not to serve an unvaccinated individual in a public place? A mandate to vaccinate children that attend public schools? A mandate to serve unvaccinated individuals at public accommodations? Or what? The details of the mandate, how it was enacted, and the circumstances under which it is being challenged, are all critical to determining its legal validity. As noted in the linked answer (text reordered for clarity): Under the US Constitution, a public health authority could even make vaccination mandatory, and this was done in some historical epidemics. In Jacobson v. Massachusetts, 197 U.S. 11 (1905), the US Supreme court held such mandatory vaccinations to be constitutional. . . . In Zucht v. King, 260 U.S. 174 (1922) the US Supreme Court upheld as constitutional a public school district's exclusion of unvaccinated students. . . . In Compagnie Francaise de Navigation a Vapeur v. Louisiana Board of Health, 186 U.S. 380 (1902) the US Supreme Court upheld as constitutional an involuntary quarantine law. Likewise, facially neutral health and safety regulations of businesses are generally valid even if they disproportionately impact members of a religion, under the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution (and as it is applies to state and local governments under the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution). The Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993 tips the balance somewhat to make accommodations in some circumstances to facially neutral laws that disproportionately impact the free exercise of religion, but still does not prohibit facially neutral laws that serve a compelling public purpose from burdening the free exercise of religion. The core language of that Act which sets forth the substantive standard in those cases states that: SEC. 3. FREE EXERCISE OF RELIGION PROTECTED. (a) IN GENERAL.—Government shall not substantially burden a person's exercise of religion even if the burden results from a rule of general applicability, except as provided in subsection (b). (b) EXCEPTION.—Government may substantially burden a person's exercise of religion only if it demonstrates that application of the burden to the person— (1) is in furtherance of a compelling governmental interest; and (2) is the least restrictive means of furthering that compelling governmental interest. (c) JUDICIAL RELIEF.— A person whose religious exercise has been burdened in violation of this section may assert that violation as a claim or defense in a judicial proceeding and obtain appropriate relief against a government. Standing to assert a claim or defense under this section shall be governed by the general rules of standing under article III of the Constitution. The standards referenced in the act tap into well established case law that was previously applied less broadly than under the Act, when the U.S. Constitution alone, unaided by the Act, was implicated. Could a restaurant refuse to serve unvaccinated individuals, even including those with sincere religiously-founded anti-vax beliefs? Yes. Usually, businesses can establish facially neutral rules even if they have a disparate religious impact. Generally, private businesses do not have an affirmative duty to serve anyone. Certainly, it could do so as a matter of company policy, if the law did not forbid discrimination specifically on vaccination status (which it currently does not in most or all places in the U.S., although there may be recent legislation on this of which I am not aware). For example, it is legal to operate a restaurant that only serves bacon cheeseburgers and operates 7 days a week, all year long, without holidays (in many places that lack blue laws for restaurants), even though this effectively denies service to strictly observant Jews, Muslims, Hindus, and (on Fridays during Lent) to observant Catholics, and could make it an uncomfortable place for such workers to work. The harder question is whether the restaurant could serve an unvaxxed individual when the business and the customer both want to do so, and both have sincere religious beliefs that cause them to feel that they must do so (the business owner might have sincere beliefs about serving everything, the customer might have sincere beliefs about being unvaxxed for religious reasons). Even then, when religious people aren't singled out for being religious, this requirement might be upheld if there was no alternative that meets the public health goals of the requirement, although the case that there could be some alternative that is less restrictive might be pretty good.
A business owner can normally refuse service for any reason unless anti-discrimination law, or some other specific law, applies. &quot;Critic of the business&quot; is not a protected class. Whether a business would act in such a way I cannot say if it would risk significant negative publicity. But I see no legal reason why they could not.
The answer is they are quite different. The SCOTUS found almost 100 years ago that the Several States have the power to require vaccinations. This is one of the &quot;reserved powers&quot; under the constitution. The Texas Heartbeat law creates a regulation on doctors (similar) and a civil cause of action (very different). However, the biggest difference is that the older case permits the state to require medical treatment while the Texas law requires a medical justification for treatment. It seems uncontroversial to require a doctor's services to perform an abortion. However, now the Texas legislation is in effect codifying the medical ethics requirement to &quot;do no harm.&quot; Medical ethics do allow exceptions based on a specific situation, and so does the law. A mandatory vaccination law is almost the opposite. It guides doctors that the general risks of vaccination are not strong enough to be considered harmful when weighed against the benefits of the vaccination. But, of course, medical ethics would also allow exceptions based on specific situations, and so should the law. Fizz already cited the case: Zucht v. King https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/260/174.
I’m guessing you have seen a sign in a business that read - “Management reserves the right to refuse service to anyone”. At least in the US, they do not need a reason as long as the reason isn’t unlawful discrimination. They can decide not to serve you.
You don’t have to swear Witnesses are given the option to swear (technically take an oath) or to affirm, which has no religious connotations. You also don’t actually swear on a Bible if you do swear. For example california. The US is a very religious state france is a secular state - it prohibits religious clothing (hijabs, crucifixes etc.) in schools. The united-kingdom (specifically England) has an official state religion (Anglican) but religion is far less prevalent in politics or society than it is in the US. For example, outside of a place of worship, who your mother is sleeping with is a far more acceptable topic of conversation than what her religious beliefs are. Which is not to say it actually is an acceptable topic of conversation, just that it’s more acceptable than religion. australia elected its first openly atheist Prime Minister in 1983. The US was not founded on the idea that there shouldn’t be established religion, just that there shouldn’t be a state religion - that is, a church backed by the power of the government. Many of the early settlers were fleeing religious prosecution from state religions. Nevertheless, it was never the intention to exclude religion from politics. Indeed, religion in the US influences politics to a much greater degree than it does in most European or Anglophone countries.
You don't have to interact with people if you don't want to If you don't want to talk or otherwise interact with somebody in a personal capacity, you don't have to. Your reasons for doing so are your reasons. Some of the congregation may have roles that require them to interact with Jane in what I will loosely call an &quot;official&quot; capacity. For example, if one of the congregants is a government employee and government business requires the interaction, they would have to do so. It gets a little tricky when there is not a clear legal duty to interact. For example, if a congregant is an employee of a company with which Jane has business and who would normally be the person to interact with Jane, they might reasonably claim that they have a religious belief that prevents them from doing so. Anti-discrimination law may require the employer to make reasonable accommodations for that belief, for example, by getting a different employee to interact with Jane.
The employer might be liable for a discrimination claim, under the doctrine of disparate impact. See Texas Department of Housing &amp; Community Affairs v. The Inclusive Communities Project, Inc and references cited therein. The idea is that an employer can be liable absent proof of intentional discrimination when a practice disproportionately affects protected classes of individuals, and the practice is not justified by reasonable business considerations. So it would depend on why this particular state of affairs in employment came about. There is a test known as the 80% rule which attempts to quantify the notion of "under-representation" as evidence of discrimination. This test (not widely respected by the courts these days) might constitute evidence of discrimination, if a protected class is demonstrably under-represented. The current standard seems to be by comparison to random selection. In EEOC v. Sambo's of Georgia, Inc., 530 F. Supp. 86, the court found that a grooming policy had a disparate impact on members of a religion (Sikhism), and was thus contrary to Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, although a requirement to shave does not obviously discriminate on the basis of religion. This points to an important element of a successful disparate impact claim, that there has to be a policy with a causal effect. In the above scenario, there is no proposed policy that has this effect. Note that the burden of proof is on the person suing for relief – they must have a theory of something the company does that causes this hiring pattern, a practice that is discriminatory. The identified policy (whatever it might be) could be justified by a business necessity defense (Griggs v. Duke Power Co., 401 U.S. 424), by showing that the practice has a demonstrable relationship to the requirements of the job. That, b.t.w., would not excuse a racially or religiously discriminatory hiring policy for a factory manufacturing menorahs or kinaras. If a company recruiting locally in Boise ID had a 75% black work force, it would be reasonable to suspect that something was up. But legally, without showing that this results from a unjustified policy of the company, mere statistically anomalous distribution is does not sustain a claim of discrimination.
I don't know of any federal law that is violated. US labor law is generally favorable to employers, compared to many other countries, and gives employers a lot of freedom in setting policies and rules, The theory is that an employee who doesn't like it can go and work somewhere else, and an employer with unreasonable policies will eventually be unable to get people to work for them. In particular, it surprises some people that employers aren't legally obligated to reimburse travel expenses at all: The FSLA does not have any rules regarding an employer's obligation to reimburse an employee for business-related travel expenses. No federal law requires reimbursement. So it would be perfectly legal for the company to require employees to pay for all their own meals when traveling on business. Given this, I'd expect that the company would have pretty broad discretion to place conditions and restrictions on reimbursement, including what they will and won't pay for. If an employee had a disability or religious beliefs that required them to eat meat, and the company wouldn't grant them an exception, they might have a claim under the ADA or Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act respectively. But if it's just that they happen to prefer meat, I don't think there's a law to guarantee them such a right. Some states could have their own laws that might be violated, though I tend to doubt it. If you have a particular state in mind, please specify.