Free Republic

Efforts to overturn vaccine mandates for both hospital patients and health care workers appear to be gaining momentum across the United States. In what is seen as a major victory for transplant patients who did not take the COVID vaccine, one of the largest transplant centers in the United States reversed its policy to require the jab in order to be eligible for an organ transplant. The University of Michigan (UM) announced its new policy on May 4 just before court proceedings were about to get underway in a lawsuit filed against it for declaring patients ineligible for an organ...

The military "reviewed" and denied 4,500 applications for religious exemptions in one 90 day periodFederal law and policies require individualized reviewsRead the IG's memo at the end of this postIn a landmark finding, the Inspector General (IG) for the Defense Dept. has found that the Pentagon has been illegally issuing blanket denials of Covid-19 vaccine religious exemptions.Federal law and policies require individualized reviews and consideration of such applications made by military troops. But the IG found no such reviews were provided.Instead, the IG says, religious exemption applications have been met with wholesale denials without meaningful reviews.The IG says its hotline...

SACRAMENTO — Assemblywoman Nicole Parra and her father traveled to Cuba in early December on what has reportedly become an annual event organized by one of California’s most powerful lobbyists and political fundraisers. Parra, D-Hanford, and other participants said the trip was arranged by Darius Anderson, founder of one of Sacramento’s premiere lobbying firms and a top fundraiser for former Gov. Gray Davis. Since travel to communist Cuba is generally prohibited except under a license from the U.S. government, Anderson’s repeated trips there with lawmakers, business people and others raise a number of questions. Why is a lobbyist arranging religious...

tioning-and-rejecting-their-religious-beliefs/ I just love it. I love my job. I love what I do, and this has been really hard. Sorry.”The pediatric nurse, who had been working at Children’s Wisconsin for 12 years, choked back tears as she stressed her passion for treating sick children to the chaplain and human resources representative tasked with questioning whether her religious beliefs were sincere enough to earn her an exemption from the Milwaukee hospital’s vaccine mandate, which took effect in November. This nurse, whose religious exemption appeal interview was shared with The Federalist on the condition of anonymity, was finally granted an exemption...

In an exclusive leak given to Big League Politics by a current nursing student who chose to remain anonymous for fear of blowback, we were able to confirm that students who attend Florida’s Keiser University and practice at the Cleveland Clinic are being forced to take Covid-19 inoculations. What’s more, Florida’s Cleveland Clinic, which hosts various medical students, has explicitly stated that they refuse to grant any type of exemption – including ones for religious and even medical reasons.

A National Education Association (NEA) Board of Directors member and English teacher at a Pennsylvania high school posted to Facebook that she thought unvaccinated individuals with religious exemptions deserved to die, according to a screenshot of the post obtained by the social media account Libs of Tik Tok.Mollie Paige Mumau took to Facebook to condemn all individuals who have not been vaccinated due to religious exemptions, accusing this group of “hiding behind religious exemptions because they don’t want anybody to tell them what to do,” according to a screenshot of her post. Mumau said religious exemptions to the COVID-19 vaccine...

Policies requiring vaccination against COVID-19 need not include, and should not include, exceptions for those who have religious objections to vaccinations. Many universities, including the University of California, are requiring vaccination for all students, staff and faculty returning to campus. Many employers, public and private, are doing so as well. These policies are essential to protect public health. The virulent Delta variant of the coronavirus has made it imperative to ensure vaccination of as many people as possible. Unfortunately, though, many of these policies have an exception for those who have a religious objection to vaccination. These are neither required...

Archbishop William E. Lori, the Archdiocese of Baltimore and Catholic Review Media (CRMedia) are part of a federal lawsuit filed March 12 to stop a Health and Human Services mandate under the Affordable Care Act they believe would require them to provide health insurance coverage for contraception, sterilization and abortion-inducing drugs. The lawsuit was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Oklahoma by the newly formed Catholic Benefits Association (CBA), an Oklahoma City-based organization representing nearly 200 Catholic employers and 19,000 employees nationwide. The CBA recently formed the Catholic Insurance Company to arrange for health provider...