A religious exemption is a legal privilege that exempts members of a certain religion from a law, regulation, or requirement. Religious exemptions are often justified as a protection of religious freedom, and proponents of religious exemptions argue that complying with a law against one's faith is a greater harm than complying against a law that one otherwise disagrees with due to a fear of divine judgment. [1] Opponents of religious exemptions argue that they mandate unequal treatment and undermine the rule of law. [2]
Many religions incorporate drug use into their practices or consider certain illegal drugs to be sacred. In areas where these drugs are illegal, religious groups may petition for a religious exemption. The use of cannabis is traditional in Rastafari, and the use of peyote is traditional for some Native American tribes. [3] [4] Laws governing alcohol may sometimes grant exceptions for practices such as Eucharist.[ citation needed ]
Religious opposition to medical procedures has prompted debate on religious exemptions in medicine. Many places allow for religious exemptions from vaccination. [5] Jehovah's Witnesses have challenged child neglect laws that obligate the parent to provide medical assistance to their children. [6]
Some religions have requirements on how adherents may dress or groom. Many governments require companies and organizations to provide exceptions for religious apparel that would typically violate a dress code. In many other places, certain religious articles of clothing are rendered illegal by laws governing public attire.[ citation needed ] Sikhism requires that adherents carry a kirpan, which often requires a religious exemption to laws regarding the carrying of weapons. [7]
Churches, marriage officiants, and government employees that oppose same-sex marriage may seek religious exemptions from involvement in such marriages. [8]
Islam and Judaism both have specific traditions regarding the slaughter of animals. Some governments have made exemptions to their animal cruelty laws to permit these traditions. [9]
Section 116 of the Constitution of Australia guarantees that the federal government shall not prohibit the free exercise of religion. Religious organizations are exempt from the Sex Discrimination Act 1984 and are legally permitted to discriminate based on sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, intersex status, relationship status, and pregnancy. [10] A religious exemption in 1998 allowed members of the Church of Christ, Scientist to refuse child vaccination without losing welfare benefits, but the exemption was ended in 2015. [11]
The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms establishes a right to "freedom of conscience and religion". In 1985, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that a business could not be compelled to close on Sunday for religious reasons in R v Big M Drug Mart Ltd . In 2004, the Supreme Court ruled that Hasidic Jews had the right to observe Sukkot on a condominium balcony against the wishes of the property owner. [12]
Under Article 9 of the Human Rights Act 1998, citizens of the United Kingdom are guaranteed the right to hold religious beliefs. The government reserves the power to legally restrict the expression of religious beliefs in the name of public safety, public order, health and morals, and the rights of others. [13]
The House of Lords has ruled that dress codes banning religious accessories are undue but that a dress code banning a full body jilbāb is within reason. The English Court of Appeal has ruled in several cases that laws promoting equal rights outweigh the right to discriminate due to religious belief. [14]
In the United States, the First Amendment guarantees that Congress will make no law "prohibiting the free exercise" of religion, and this clause is used as justification for the legality of religious exemptions in the United States. [1] The earliest court case litigating religious exemptions was the New York case People v. Phillips in 1813, ruling that a Catholic priest could not be compelled to testify on a confession in violation of his duty as a priest. In 1878, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that the government could ban polygamy without a religious exemption in Reynolds v. United States . In 1943, the Supreme Court did grant a religious exemption to an ordinance against door-to-door solicitation in Murdock v. Pennsylvania . In 1972, the Supreme Court established the "Sherbert test" in Sherbert v. Verner, establishing a standard of strict scrutiny on religious exemptions. The Supreme Court moved away from religious exemptions in Employment Division v. Smith in 1990. [15]
In the 1990s, Congress passed the Religious Freedom Restoration Act and the American Indian Religious Freedom Act to write religious exemptions into law. The Religious Freedom Restoration Act authorized the government to enforce a law against religious practice only if it "furthers a compelling governmental interest" and it is the "least restrictive means" to pursue this interest. [16] The American Indian Religious Freedom Act granted a religious exemption for the use of peyote for religious purposes by Native American tribes. [4] Many states have since passed their own versions of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act to extend its coverage to state law.
In 2014, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of religious exemptions for private businesses in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc. Legal scholars have considered a wide variety of implications that may result from this decision, many of which have yet to be tested in court. [17]
A substantial area of religious exemptions in the United States are those that allow individuals to avoid vaccination mandates. For childhood vaccination mandates, most U.S. states provide some kind of religious exemption, with standards for receiving such an exemption varying from a minimal statement in some states to a more searching examination of the sincerity of the beliefs claimed in others. [18]
As of 2021 [update] , 44 states and the District of Columbia grant exemptions for people who have religious objections to immunizations. [19] The six states that do not recognize a religious objection are California (California Senate Bill 277), Connecticut, Maine (2020 Maine Question 1), New York, and West Virginia. [19] [20] [21] Until 2019, only Mississippi, West Virginia and California did not permit religious exemptions. [22] However, the 2019 measles outbreak led to the repeal of religious exemptions in the state of New York and for the MMR vaccination in the state of Washington. [19] In 2023, Mississippi re-instated religious exemptions for childhood vaccine mandates. [23]
The Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993, Pub. L. No. 103-141, 107 Stat. 1488, codified at 42 U.S.C. § 2000bb through 42 U.S.C. § 2000bb-4, is a 1993 United States federal law that "ensures that interests in religious freedom are protected." The bill was introduced by Congressman Chuck Schumer (D–NY) on March 11, 1993. A companion bill was introduced in the Senate by Ted Kennedy (D-MA) the same day. A unanimous U.S. House and a nearly unanimous U.S. Senate—three senators voted against passage—passed the bill, and President Bill Clinton signed it into law.
The Free Exercise Clause accompanies the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. The Establishment Clause and the Free Exercise Clause together read:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof...
Section 2 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms ("Charter") is the section of the Constitution of Canada that lists what the Charter calls "fundamental freedoms" theoretically applying to everyone in Canada, regardless of whether they are a Canadian citizen, or an individual or corporation. These freedoms can be held against actions of all levels of government and are enforceable by the courts. The fundamental freedoms are freedom of expression, freedom of religion, freedom of thought, freedom of belief, freedom of peaceful assembly and freedom of association.
Employment Division, Department of Human Resources of Oregon v. Smith, 494 U.S. 872 (1990), is a United States Supreme Court case that held that the state could deny unemployment benefits to a person fired for violating a state prohibition on the use of peyote even though the use of the drug was part of a religious ritual. Although states have the power to accommodate otherwise illegal acts performed in pursuit of religious beliefs, they are not required to do so.
Freedom of religion in Canada is a constitutionally protected right, allowing believers the freedom to assemble and worship without limitation or interference.
Vaccination and religion have interrelations of varying kinds. No major religion prohibits vaccinations, and some consider it an obligation because of the potential to save lives. However, some people cite religious adherence as a basis for opting to forego vaccinating themselves or their children. Many such objections are pretextual: in Australia, anti-vaccinationists founded the Church of Conscious Living, a "fake church", leading to religious exemptions being removed in that country, and one US pastor was reported to offer vaccine exemptions in exchange for online membership of his church.
Sherbert v. Verner, 374 U.S. 398 (1963), was a case in which the Supreme Court of the United States held that the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment required the government to demonstrate both a compelling interest and that the law in question was narrowly tailored before it denied unemployment compensation to someone who was fired because her job requirements substantially conflicted with her religion.
In the United States, freedom of religion is a constitutionally protected right provided in the religion clauses of the First Amendment. As stated in the Bill of Rights: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof...". George Washington stressed freedom of religion as a fundamental American principle even before the First Amendment was ratified. In 1790, in a letter to the Touro Synagogue, he expressed the government “gives to bigotry no sanction” and “to persecution no assistance." Freedom of religion is linked to the countervailing principle of separation of church and state, a concept advocated by Colonial founders such as Dr. John Clarke, Roger Williams, William Penn, and later Founding Fathers such as James Madison and Thomas Jefferson.
A vaccination policy is a health policy adopted in order to prevent the spread of infectious disease. These policies are generally put into place by state or local governments, but may also be set by private facilities, such as workplaces or schools. Many policies have been developed and implemented since vaccines were first made widely available.
Prince v. Massachusetts, 321 U.S. 158 (1944), was a case in which the Supreme Court of the United States held that the government has broad authority to regulate the actions and treatment of children. Parental authority is not absolute and can be permissibly restricted if doing so is in the interests of a child's welfare. While children share many of the rights of adults, they face different potential harms from similar activities.
State Religious Freedom Restoration Acts are state laws based on the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA), a federal law that was passed almost unanimously by the U.S. Congress in 1993 and signed into law by President Bill Clinton. The laws mandate that religious liberty of individuals can only be limited by the "least restrictive means of furthering a compelling government interest". Originally, the federal law was intended to apply to federal, state, and local governments. In 1997, the U.S. Supreme Court in City of Boerne v. Flores held that the Religious Freedom Restoration Act only applies to the federal government but not states and other local municipalities within them. As a result, 21 states have passed their own RFRAs that apply to their individual state and local governments.
Law and religion is the interdisciplinary study of relationships between law, especially public law, and religion. Over a dozen scholarly organizations and committees focussing on law and religion were in place by 1983, and a scholarly quarterly, the Journal of Law and Religion, was first published that year. The Ecclesiastical Law Journal began publication in 1987. The Rutgers Journal of Law and Religion was founded in 1999. The Oxford Journal of Law and Religion was founded in England in 2012.
Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc., 573 U.S. 682 (2014), is a landmark decision in United States corporate law by the United States Supreme Court allowing privately held for-profit corporations to be exempt from a regulation that its owners religiously object to, if there is a less restrictive means of furthering the law's interest, according to the provisions of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993. It is the first time that the Court has recognized a for-profit corporation's claim of religious belief, but it is limited to privately held corporations. The decision does not address whether such corporations are protected by the free exercise of religion clause of the First Amendment of the Constitution.
California Senate Bill 277 (SB277) is a California law that removed personal belief as a reason for an exemption from the vaccination requirements for entry to private or public elementary or secondary schools in California, as well as day care centers. The final version of the bill was enacted by the California Legislature in 2015 and was signed into law by Governor Jerry Brown on June 30, 2015.
Freedom of religion in Australia is allowed in practice and protected to varying degrees through the constitution and legislation at the Federal, state and territory level. Australia is a pluralist country with legislated principle of state neutrality and with no state religion. The nation has over 13.6 million people who identify as religious and over 9.8 million who identify with no religion.
Anti-vaccinationism in chiropractic is widespread, but there are notable differences within the trade. Chiropractic is a form of alternative medicine founded on the idea that all disease is caused by disruption of the flow of "innate" in the spine, by so-called vertebral subluxations – a pseudoscientific concept. Over time chiropractic has divided into "straights" who adhere to the subluxation theory and "mixers" who adhere more closely to a reality-based view of anatomy. "Straight" chiropractors are very likely to be anti-vaccination, but all chiropractic training tends to reduce acceptance of vaccines.
Vaccination policy of the United States is the subset of U.S. federal health policy that deals with immunization against infectious disease. It is decided at various levels of the government, including the individual states. This policy has been developed over the approximately two centuries since the invention of vaccination with the purpose of eradicating disease from the U.S. population, or creating a herd immunity. Policies intended to encourage vaccination impact numerous areas of law, including regulation of vaccine safety, funding of vaccination programs, vaccine mandates, adverse event reporting requirements, and compensation for injuries asserted to be associated with vaccination.
Phillips v. City of New York, 775 F.3d 538, cert. denied, 136 S. Ct. 104 (2015), was a 2015 decision of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit addressing vaccination mandates and exemptions from them in New York City. The court concluded that it was within the constitutional police power of the state to mandate vaccination, and that religious exemptions were not constitutionally required. Therefore, even though the state did permit religious exemptions, it was free to provide them with limitations including the exclusion of exempted children from school during an outbreak of the disease, and requiring applicants to demonstrate the sincerity of their religious objection in order to receive an exemption.
Caviezel v. Great Neck Public Schools, 500 Fed. Appx. 16 (2012), is a decision of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit upholding the denial of a religious exemption to mandatory vaccination sought by a parent who claimed to adhere to a non-denominational religious view without a formal doctrine.
Little Sisters of the Poor Saints Peter and Paul Home v. Pennsylvania, 591 U.S. ___ (2020), was a United States Supreme Court case involving ongoing conflicts between the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) and the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) over the ACA's contraceptive mandate. The ACA exempts nonprofit religious organizations from complying with the mandate, to which for-profit religious organizations objected.
