Indiana legislature to hold hearing on bill saying employers must allow religious vaccine exemptions

(The Center Square) – The Indiana legislature plans a hearing for Thursday on a bill that would strengthen religious exemptions from COVID-19 vaccine mandates by requiring employers to allow the exemption if an employee states in writing

House Bill 1001, authored by the Republican floor leader Matt Lehman, R-Berne, has 55 legislators listed as co-authors, including Speaker of the House Todd Huston, R-Fishers.

HB 1001 would also outlaw vaccine passports at state universities. The other sections on the COVID-19 vaccine focus on workplace exemptions and require all employers mandating the vaccine to allow three kinds of exemptions – medical, religious and natural immunity for the six-month period following a person’s recovery from the COVID-19 virus.

The bill allows employers to request a letter from a physician, physician’s assistant or advanced practice registered nurse for a medical exemption and an exemption based on natural immunity but says employers cannot require documentation for those requesting a religious exemptions.

The employee need only “present to the employer an exemption statement in writing indicating that the employee declines the immunization against Covid-19 because of a sincerely held religious belief,” the bill says.

If the employer receives this, it “must allow” the employee to opt out of getting the vaccine, and the employer may not take an “adverse employment action” against an employee who has requested or gotten an exemption.

The bill specifies employers who have a vaccine mandate can require employees who’ve gotten exemptions to be tested, but not more than once a week and at no cost to the employee.

The three Biden Administration vaccine mandates – for health care workers, employees of federal contractors and employees of businesses with 100 or more employees – have all been halted. Several Indiana hospitals and some other corporations have proceeded with their own vaccine mandates.

More than 100 employees of Ascension St. Vincent hospitals have been suspended without pay for not getting the vaccine after the company rejected some religious exemptions. They include the administrator of a small Ascension hospital in Warren County near the Illinois border, who testified at a Nov. 23 hearing her requests for religious exemptions were denied twice before she was suspended.

All suspended employees are to be fired on Jan. 4 if they are not fully vaccinated by that date or have had exemptions approved.

“They haven’t backed off,” says William Bock III, an attorney representing a doctor and four other employees in a suit against Ascension. A judge did not immediately grant a request for a preliminary injunction filed in early November, but Bock says he’s filing an amended complaint this week.

After a seven-hour hearing Nov. 23 on draft language similar to HB 1001, Senate leader Rodric Bray, R-Martinsville, said more time was needed to consider the language of the bill and criticized employers who he said had “callously” rejected legitimate requests for religious and medical exemptions and had forced employees to agree to resign rather than be terminated, to prevent them from being eligible for unemployment compensation.

Some say H.B. 1001, in its current form, won’t do enough to protect workers.

“Our position is that exemptions are not enough to protect against the harm that we are seeing,” says Leah Wilson, the head of the Indiana chapter of Stand for Health Freedom. “It’s already an invasion of privacy to be asked about your vaccination status.”

Wilson and other members of her group want the bill to be rewritten to prohibit vaccine mandates in the workplace, and to prohibit employers from treating employees differently based on vaccine status.

A Democrat on the House Committee on Employment, Labor and Pensions, Rep. Ryan Hatfield of Evansville, said he has “serious reservations and concerns” about the vaccine mandate language in the bill but will be listening to the testimony with an open mind.

“I will be looking for an explanation for why the courts are not a proper venue for these things,” he said, mentioning Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits discrimination based on race and gender and also religion.

He said he’s not expecting there to be a vote on HB 1001 before January.

“In the first week or two of January, it will likely move quickly,” he said.

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