The New York Times says most Americans are critical of religious exemptions to coronavirus vaccines:
Only about one in 10 Americans say that receiving the Covid-19 vaccine would violate their religious beliefs, while about 60 percent say that too many people are using religion as an excuse to avoid vaccine mandates, according to a new survey from the Public Religion Research Institute and the Interfaith Youth Core.
A majority of Americans are critical of religious exemptions and say that the vaccines do not violate their own religious beliefs or the teachings of their religion, and that there are no valid religious reasons to refuse the Covid-19 vaccine.
The survey indicates a sharp divide between vaccinated and unvaccinated Americans. That gap widens along partisan lines. More than 80 percent of vaccinated Democrats say they are angry at those who refuse to get vaccinated, and similar numbers of unvaccinated Republicans are “angry at those who think they have the right to tell me to get vaccinated against Covid-19.” Less than half of vaccinated Republicans and unvaccinated Democrats say they are angry along such lines.
About one in five Americans say that vaccination has caused major conflict within their families.
More than 200 million Americans — over 60 percent of the population — have been fully vaccinated against the coronavirus….the United States lags significantly behind several other countries, which have inoculated over 80 percent of their populations….
About three in 10 unvaccinated Americans say they have already asked or plan to ask for an exemption from the vaccine because it goes against their religious values….But even among those who said the vaccines violate their understanding of their religion’s teaching, more than four in 10 have already been vaccinated or intend to get a shot as soon as possible.
There have been many lawsuits challenging vaccination requirements, but most of them have been about whether the government officials issuing those vaccination requirements had the statutory authority to do so — not whether requiring vaccination violates someone’s constitutional rights.
For example, federal judges have repeatedly ruled that Biden’s requirement that most private sector workplaces (those of employers with more than 100 workers) require vaccination or weekly testing was not validly issued under the federal OSHA law. And a smaller number of judges have blocked Biden administration vaccination requirements specific to healthcare workers or government contractors.
But these rulings just suggested that vaccination requirements are a state matter, or in limited situations, something that Congress can require — rather than something the Biden administration can impose without Congressional authorization. They didn’t say that people generally have a constitutional right to avoid getting vaccinated.
Challenges to state vaccination requirements on constitutional grounds have usually lost.
Phil Kerpen provides this summary of where Biden’s various vaccine mandates stand, in terms of whether they have been blocked by the courts, or are still in effect. For the most part, they have been blocked for the time being.
Biden’s five mandates:OSHA [most private sector workplaces] – stayed nationallyCMS [healthcare workers] – enjoined nationallyContractor – enjoined nationallyFederal employee – punted to next yearMilitary – still moving forward, unvaxed “flagged,” blocked from promotion/reenlistment
