John Dooney, an adviser for the Society for Human Resource Management, said that before COVID, most companies rarely encountered requests for religious exemptions. “We are not asking employees for any documentation but reserve the right to do so,” read the State Street statement.
State Street requires employees to be vaccinated, but doesn’t ask questions if someone claims a religious exemption. Others, such as State Street Corp., a Boston-based global financial services company with about 9,000 Massachusetts employees, provided only general statements. One of the students had claimed a religious exemption, saying she is a Roman Catholic, yet acknowledged she received other vaccines in her late teenage years including flu shots.īut on Tuesday, another federal judge, this one in New York, temporarily blocked that state from forcing health care workers to be vaccinated against COVID after a group of workers sued because New York’s mandate did not allow religious exemptions.Ĭorporate squeamishness on the subject is apparently widespread several companies and universities contacted by the Globe for this story declined to comment about their process for granting religious exemptions. Employers and human resource officers are keenly aware of the growing number of lawsuits challenging mandatory shots.Ī federal judge last month dismissed a lawsuit against the University of Massachusetts over its requirement that students be fully vaccinated against COVID-19 before returning to campus.
“As more and more people are having to deal with these mandates, the number of those opposed to them will increase, not because people are all of a sudden getting religious,” Mihet said, “but because they have to all of a sudden make decisions.”įederal civil rights law requires companies to accommodate religious beliefs that are “sincerely held,” putting employers at risk of a lawsuit if they don’t make allowances for employees’ faith-based claims.īut determining sincerity in a country deeply divided over COVID mandates has become a tense exercise, a journey into uncharted territory.
0 kommentar(er)
