It's Monday, October four. I'm Oscar Emiras from the Daily Dive podcast in Los Angeles, and this is reopening America. As the deadline for many vaccination mandates are coming soon, many still resisting their shots are looking for exemptions. Religious exemptions are one way that people are seeking to get out of the mandates, but they may not be as easy to get as some may think. Employers have a
lot of discretion when granting these. Employers have to provide a reasonable accommodation, but they can also probe whether a person's beliefs are sincere and deny it if they think they're not. Andrea Shoe, Labor and Workplace correspondent at NPR, joins us for more. Thanks for joining us, Andrea, thanks so much for having me. Well, we're seeing a lot more mandates of vaccines coming through, you know, we're seeing
these in in certain cities. Employers are starting to mandate their employees to get the COVID nineteen vaccines, and sometimes they're not offering the alternative of maybe getting a weekly test or something. A lot of workers are not happy about this, and they're pushing back. One of the things that a lot of people are trying to do is get a real religious exemption to the vaccine mandate. But
there's all sorts of rules in place with this. The employers have a pretty um wide latitude with what they can approve and how they can accommodate. So, Andrew, you wrote a piece about this really interesting stuff. So help us walk through some of this. What are the obligations employers have when people say I want to get a
religious exemption? Right? Right? So the right to request of religious exemption comes from Title seven of the Civil Rights Act, and you know that is the law that protects workers from discrimination on the basis of you know, many things, including religion is one of them. So the federal government says that, you know, employers have to provide reasonable accommodations for the workers who have sincerely held religious beliefs unless and there's a really big unless here, unless doing so
poses an undoe hardship to the company. And so that's you know, it's a question like what is an undue hardship. That's something that I've been a sploring. Actually, yeah, And because you know, if you have to change the whole business model or workflow or something, you know, that's an easy way to say no at that at that point, So when it comes to these reasonable accommodations, you know what does that mean? You know what can on what
basis can they start refusing? Right, so that what the law says for religious exemption cases, the undue hardship, it doesn't like it doesn't have to be you rearranging your whole company. The actual language uses the word diminimus, which kind of means minimal. So how undue hardship is defined is more than a diminimus cost or burden on the operation of the employer's business. So think about it, more
than a minimal cost. It's a pretty low bar. And you know, lawyers I spoke to you gave me examples like if somebody's religious beliefs requires them to not work on Saturdays and as a result, the company has to rearrange a bunch of people's shifts, that could be considered an undue hardship and they could deny that person accommodation of not working on Saturdays. So there's I mean, there's a lot of power obviously on the employer side of things.
I do want to get into the fact of you know, employers can ask you about your religious beliefs, they can you know, see if those religious beliefs are sincere. And this is where it gets really interesting because you know, we're seeing obviously there's a lot of misinformation that's all found on the internet. You know, a lot of people are saying that they have objections to vaccines that use fetal cells in research, testing or production. They don't want
to be putting that stuff in their bodies. And this is where it gets very technical with the COVID nineteen vaccines at least, yes, right, so that is a common reason that people are citing that they say, you know, vaccines are made using fetal cells. What public health officials have made clear is that the COVID nineteen vaccines, I'll start with Fiser and Maderna, they were used in the
development and testing of those vaccines. It was fetal cell lines that were developed decades go in a laboratory and this is a common practice in pharmaceutical research. And then for the J and J vaccines a little bit different, different fetal cell lines were being used the production of the J and J vaccine. But to be clear, none of these COVID vaccines contain any fetal cells. And that is misinformation that is out there. But um, you know one of the CEOs. I spoke to a THEO of
a hospital in Arkansas. It's Conway Regional Medical Center. Matt Troupe is CEO, and you know, he had about forty five requests for religious exemptions out of eight hundred employees, about five percent. They were all based on the fetal cell issue. He wanted to educate his workforce about this issue, so he had his staff compiled this list of medicines that have also used feel cells. This is really search and development. Yeah, this is really great and shows how
much you know everyday products might be doing this. And if you're trying to claim an exemption just for this vaccine and you you know, you use any of these other products, you really have no standing. It seems like, uh, but continue, But that's exactly what he said that He said, you know, if you use these products, if you're asking for a religious exemption, I want you to attest to you not using these products in the future or you know, now their products like thailan al I view Profen Tom's
I think x lax is on the list. Clareton Paptobismo, right, and he said, you know, people need to know that if they're going to be consistent in their beliefs. You know, this applies to a lot of different things. But she also mentioned employers can probe their employees on their you know, whether their belief is sincerely held. I've also heard people employers say they ask, do you have children in public school? Are they vaccinated? Because most places do have a vaccine
requirement for public school? Do you attend church? You know, there are all kinds of questions that the employers can ask, and I think generally, up until now, most employers took employees at their word. If they say I haven't sincerely held belief, they would sort of move on to the next phase of trying to figure out if there was a reasonable accommodation. But I think with the COVID nineteen vaccine, a lot more employers are scrutinizing the beliefs that are
being put forth. Anyway, Yeah, definitely, And in that hospital system, I guess that they have their workforce is vaccinated, so you know, they're saying, maybe we can do weekly testing to help out or something. But but I mean having them attest to that kind of questionnaire and do you use all this other stuff. Definitely a way to kind of weed out those that are just doing this because they're trying to be defiant about that whole thing. And we're seeing, you know a lot of this stuff coming
down the pipeline right now. United Airlines is going to be firing a lot of people. There's law enforcement agencies across the country, a ton of them, you know, have uh, you know, try to get realistic religious exemptions, and these deadlines are coming to be vaccinated, and there's a potential that a lot of people can start losing jobs pretty quickly. Yeah. I should note that hospital in Arkansas they did actually grant everybody who asked for one of religio this exemption,
and like you said, they're gonna do testing. The CEO really said, this is this is really all about education, but you know, we want to be respectful of people's religious beliefs. United Airlines, which you mentions, is interesting, they did announce that they are starting the termination process. Those people did not actually apply for exemptions, They did not
get the shots, did not apply for exemptions separately. I think it's roughly two thousand people applied for exemptions and United is still trying to figure that out right now, some employees did sue United, saying, you know, because those people who applied for religious exemptions and I think medical exemptions as well, United told them we're going to put you on unpaidly for an indefinite period of time, and
some employees have suited saying that's not a reasonable accommodation. Now, in the past, courts have upheld unpaid leave as a reasonable acommodation. They said, yes, this is something employers can offer, as you know, it is reasonable. So I'm not sure where that's going to end up. But for the time being, United says for those you know, it's about less than three percent of their workforce who applied for these exemptions. For now, they are going to work still and they're
going to try to figure it out by October. Right. That's a tough one for them, right, and it's like, we're not going to fire you, but you're just not gonna be getting any hours. So that's gonna be a really tough one for them once they get there if they pay. And also that I think the people were told they had to pay for their own health insurance premium, so you know, that's that's a pretty big financial head for people, even if it's for six months or eight
months or something. When it comes to the heads of these religions and stuff, when people are trying to claim these religious exemptions, does that have anything to do with it, Because we've seen Pope Francis, you know, for Catholics obviously, you know, he's said people should go out there and get their vaccinations. Does it matter if the head of your religious organization says yes or no, one way or
the other. Yeah, you know, Pope Francis said, you know, getting vaccinated is an act of love, even it actually, when it comes down to it, it doesn't because it's really it's not really about what the religious in stitutions for leaders say. It's really about your personal belief. But it is interesting to see that, you know, even like the Christian Science church, Christian Science generally council's prayer rather than medical care, they do not have an official policy
and vaccinations. They've said it's it's up to the individuals to decide. So, you know, we do see a lot of clerical leaders out there encouraging people to go get vaccinated. There are some heads of churches who are saying the opposite, even offering to write letters for members of their church to you know, support their case for religious exemption. Again that given what we've all what we've discussed so far, you know that may or may not, you know, help
your case with your employer. Kind of it's really an employer's hands. The last thing, just briefly, because I mentioned the misinformation online and everything. You know, there's a lot of Facebook groups things like that trying to share tips on how to get that religious exemption to succeed. You know, some of them are are charging services and uh, you know, we'll get somebody to sign this for you to kind
of what you were just saying right now. A lot of that, you know, you really don't know if it's gonna work. So that's that's the other tough part of it. Yeah, yeah, keep my colleague. Guess my colleague, you know, she's the tech reporter. She's she's seen all this. She was in these Facebook groups. She saw people charging a hundred seventy
five dollars for a phone concert over this. You know, we really think, you know, people probably should think twice about paying for stuff like that, because at the end of the day, if your employer feels it's an undoe hardship for them to provide you an accommodation. They can deny your request. There's a lot still yet to go through, and as I mentioned, a lot of these mandate deadlines are coming, so a lot more action on all of
this coming up pretty soon. Still, Andrea Shoe, Labor and Workplace correspondent at NPR, thank you very much for joining us. Thank you so much for having me. I'm ascar Rameras and this has been reopening America. Don't forget that. For today's big news stories, you can check me out on the Daily Dive podcast every Monday through Friday. So if all old sun I, Heart Radio or wherever you get your podcast. H