Laws (Lies) of Omission?
Can New Jersey make religious exemptions disappear simply by making the words disappear? It turns out the answer is no.
On May 31, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) reached a settlement with a group of five medical professionals from the Inspira Health System who were wrongfully denied religious exemptions to mandatory influenza vaccinations.
From the Courier Post:
New Jersey’s Inspira Medical Centers, Inc., has agreed to pay $100,000 after six employees charged that a mandatory flu vaccination policy discriminated against their religious beliefs, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission announced Wednesday.
Apparently, it was a case of misinformation… or disinformation. And it has left many wondering how it was that federal anti-discrimination laws were so egregiously and repeatedly overlooked.
“This is an issue that every first-year law student should have flagged as incorrect,” says civil rights attorney John Coyle, who brought the charges before the EEOC on behalf of the healthcare workers.
The EEOC’s press release explains:
In 2020, Inspira modified its influenza vaccination policy in an attempt to comply with a New Jersey statute that requires health care employees to get the influenza vaccine. The statute provided for medical exemptions but didn’t provide religious exemptions. Inspira then modified its pre-existing influenza vaccination policy to remove the ability to obtain a religious exemption and denied their employees’ request for a religious accommodation.
Such alleged conduct violates Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which requires employers to provide reasonable accommodations to the sincerely held religious beliefs of their employees.
Deleting Our Religious Rights
The statute in question is N.J.S.A. 26:2H-18.79, which requires healthcare facilities to establish and implement an annual influenza vaccination program. Signed into law by Governor Murphy in 2020, it included a procedure for obtaining a medical exemption, but removed a section from the previous law for how to apply for a religious exemption. This led state lawmakers to decide that New Jersey had “repealed” it. Industry trade groups, media outlets and even the New Jersey State Legislature Offie of Legislative Services perpetuated the the assertion that only medical exemptions were available.
According to Coyle, all of this could have been avoided if Governor Murphy, the Attorney General, the Director of Health, Director of the Office of Legislative Services had simply reviewed the Supremacy Clause from the United States Constitution, which establishes that federal law “shall be the supreme Law of the Land… any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State tot he Contrary notwithstanding.”
Instead, these authorities parroted what they should have known to be untrue.
“This is not new,” warns Coyle. “A lot of people who seem very authoritative openly lie to you about what your rights are.”
“There’s an insidiousness to it. When a lie is repeated so often, when it’s supported by authorities like the Attorney General… when you can find article after article, in law blogs, from industry trade groups providing hospital guidance, confirming the lie… At some point no one will know what’s actually true. But the truth is New Jersey can’t repeal Title VII of the Civil Rights Act by deleting the words that tell you that you have the those rights.”
It’s a lesson that bears repeating since the memory-holes seem to run deep in New Jersey. Long before COVID, the EEOC had clarified that an employee’s sincerely held religious belief in opposition to mandatory vaccination was protected under anti-discrimination law.
Fortunately, Coyle is well-versed in the Bill of Rights and continues to remind legislators, industry trade groups, the Attorney General and all New Jerseyans what is written in the U.S. Constitution.
Punished for Believing the Lie
Sadly, much of the damage has already been done. This misinformation forced many healthcare workers to choose between their careers and their beliefs during a critical hospital staff shortage. And the damage didn’t stop there.
“The impact of this deception was stunning. Nurses who had been working under a religious exemption from vaccination for many years were suddenly told it had been repealed and handed newspaper articles about it being repealed. So they violated their beliefs in the name of trying to support their families, or lost their careers. Then, only a few short years later, when COVID caused forced vaccination to come to the forefront, when nurses applied for exemptions, they were told that their beliefs were insincere because they already had been coerced into receiving the flu vaccine.”
Perhaps its time for citizens to learn and claim our rights.