By David Goerg

IDAHO FALLS—The Idaho National Laboratory recently announced that Oct. 8 is the official deadline for its employees to file religious exemption requests. 

Exemption requests will reprieve workers from the federally-mandated vaccination requirement, if approved by the Battelle Energy Alliance’s committee of review.

Vaccinations must be completed at least two weeks prior to Nov. 15, in order to allow time for the recipient to deal with any unexpected symptoms and quarantine for the appropriate amount of time. 

The urgency of these deadlines is a cause of serious concern to many INL workers.

Republican Rep. Ron Nate is the state legislative representative for District 34, which includes Madison County and part of Bonneville County, and is home to many of the employees of the INL.

“A lot of our citizens out here are concerned about the new policy where the INL is demanding that they be vaccinated,” Nate said. 

Over 820 INL employees have signed a formal petition which states (in part) that “We believe these mandates to be unconstitutional and an egregious overreach of the executive powers of the President.”

Nicholas Christiansen—the author of the petition, as reported in a previous article—was abruptly terminated from his position at the INL following controversy over his statements and resistance to the vaccination mandates.

“I’m aware of Nick’s situation, how they treated him,” Nate said. “I think he’s being treated like a scapegoat, or as a signal out there. That if you push back against the system, this is what will happen to you.”

Christiansen and others have reached out to Nate for help and assistance in preventing what they see as unconstitutional coercion by the federal government and their employer, the INL.

“I’ve seen eight different pieces of potential legislation that, in part or fully, solve this problem,” said Nate. “And Nick is exactly right on the constitutional argument, that an employer does not have the right to question everything about your (religious) past or your present.”

According to Nate, there is the possibility of using legislative action to prevent the enforcement of the vaccination mandates in the future.

“The Speaker (of the House) could reconvene us at any point in time and say, ‘Let’s come back and explore this.’ The only thing that can explain the hesitancy of the speaker in this case is the fact that he doesn’t want to upset those who are trying to help him get reelected,” Nate said. 

In order for the Idaho Legislature to reconvene and consider the passage of new legislation, at least 36 state representatives would need to gather at the Capitol.

 “If we had 36 willing legislators, we could reconvene ourselves despite the leadership’s wishes, but there were only 16 legislators courageous enough to go to Boise and attempt it,” Nate said. “We need more numbers. I think all these legislators in eastern Idaho ought to be held accountable for their lack of action on this issue.” 

As of Oct. 5, Idaho’s Committee on Federalism, an interim committee of the Idaho State Legislature, is considering legislation that could reconvene the legislature.

RELIGIOUS FREEDOM, TITLE VII and CHAPTER 12

Religious Freedom has long been a significant feature of American life and society.  The First Amendment to the Constitution deals with this ever-relevant sphere of activity by stating that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”

However, legal conflicts surrounding what type of religious activity is justifiable in the eyes of the law have long been part and parcel of American life.

Additionally, the landmark Civil Rights Act was passed in 1964, which includes Title VII —a statute devoted to preventing different types of discrimination in employment and the workplace.

Among the many categories of relevance, including race, color, religion, sex and national origin, Title VII establishes the possibility that American citizens can receive religious exemptions to rules and requirements that would otherwise be binding.  

This is a portion of the law which ensures that the unique religious interests of individuals are not violated, but are instead given protection. 

As reported in a previous article by Rexburg Commons, INL employees can potentially avoid vaccination by seeking a religious or medical exemption. Religious exemption requests for federal employers are conducted by the INL according to Title VII of the Civil Rights Act.

The “Chapter 12: Religious Discrimination” guidance document for Title VII, which is published by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission on their website, states that employers must “accommodate those religious beliefs that are ‘sincerely held,'” and further clarifies that, “Whether or not a religious belief is sincerely held by an applicant or employee is rarely at issue in many types of Title VII religious claims.”

The document states that “The test under Title VII’s definition of religion is whether the beliefs are, in the individual’s own scheme of things, religious.”

Chapter 12 also points out that “A sincere religious believer doesn’t forfeit his religious rights merely because he is not scrupulous in his observance,” although “evidence tending to show that an employee acted in a manner inconsistent with his professed religious belief is, of course, relevant to the factfinder’s [sic] evaluation of sincerity.”

The document also reads: “The Supreme Court has made it clear that it is not a court’s role to determine the reasonableness of an individual’s religious beliefs, and that ‘religious beliefs need not be acceptable, logical, consistent, or comprehensible to others in order to merit First Amendment protection.’”

CLOSE TO HOME 

According to INL employees who requested to remain anonymous, INL Director John Wagner had allegedly promised to dedicate legal resources to combat any forthcoming vaccination mandates.

“We feel betrayed.” one source said. “I think that sometime between last December and (this) September, something changed.”

When asked if employees would be able to resubmit a request for religious exemption after the Oct. 8 deadline, INL spokesperson Sarah Nuemann responded with the following statement:

“After reviewing the submitted documentation, BEA will respond to the request, in writing, advising whether the request for an accommodation is granted or denied. If denied, BEA will explain its basis for the denial, and the staff member will be afforded the opportunity to submit additional information in response to the denial and a request for reconsideration.”

This seems to indicate that religious exemption requests that are filed before the Oct. 8th deadline will still be considered valid and subject to the resubmission process.

The INL declined to release the number of exemption requests and approvals, saying: “We do not provide details of approvals or denials to the media as they are considered sensitive personnel records.” 

At the time of publication, the number of religious exemption approvals awarded by the INL was unknown, although there were multiple reports from anonymous sources who claim that their religious exemptions were rejected—sometimes more than once—before they received approval through the resubmission process. 

CONTINUING ON

While the deadlines for federal workers are fast approaching, the issue of mandatory vaccinations is just gaining steam. 

According to the “Path out of the Pandemic” portion of the official White House website, “The Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) is developing a rule that will require all employers with 100 or more employees to ensure their workforce is fully vaccinated or require any workers who remain unvaccinated to produce a negative test result on at least a weekly basis before coming to work.”

The website additionally stated: “This requirement will impact over 80 million workers in private sector businesses with 100+ employees.”

Public controversy over the enforcement of Executive Order 14043 continues to develop as the details and full scope of that order are carried out by the Executive Branch.

“In The Declaration of Independence, it says, ‘We are endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable rights and among them are the rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,’ and then the very next sentence says, ‘For this purpose, governments were instituted among men—to protect these rights,” Nate said. “That is the role of the state legislature right now and we ought to be protecting those rights.”

Nate also observed that individuals who allow the termination process to run its course by not being vaccinated may very well have a compelling argument to make in the future, when the legitimacy of Executive Order 14043 is contested in the courts. 

Top photo courtesy of Ron Nate.

See rexburgcommons.com for more local news and events.