In defiance of a recent legal standard, the Air Force’s Air Education and Training Command allegedly uses a document that effectively denies all requests for religious COVID-19 vaccine exemptions.
Air Education and Training Command is the approval authority for all religious accommodation requests for military members assigned to the 13 AETC Air Force installations, Just the News reports.
Under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993, as the AETC analysis document cites, “the government may not burden an individual’s religion unless the requirement furthers a compelling government interest with the least restrictive means.”
However, in reviewing service members’ accommodation requests, AETC uses a medical “least restrictive means” analysis tool that improperly reaches a blanket predetermination that the vaccine is the least restrictive means by which the Air Force can achieve its government interest, according to a source who obtained the document.
The Air Force defines its compelling government interest as “mission accomplishment,” which “includes military readiness, unit cohesion, good order and discipline, and health and safety for both the member and the unit.”
The analysis tool is similar to the Navy’s 50-step standard operating procedure streamlining religious exemption request denials, which a federal judge ruled last month was unconstitutional.
The analysis tool notes that the Department of Defense’s policy is to “accommodate religious practices ‘which do not have an adverse impact on military readiness, unit cohesion, good order and discipline, or health and safety.’”
Air Force instruction “notes that if a compelling governmental interest exists, the government must consider whether vaccination is the least restrictive means necessary to achieve the compelling interest,” the document reads.
Instead of analyzing the restrictiveness of alternative mitigation strategies, the Air Force focuses its analysis on the expected efficacy of a series of alternatives.
It is therefore “very important,” according to the analysis “to understand if preventive measure(s) would be as effective as vaccination (with other continued mitigation strategies) in furthering the compelling government interest.”
The analysis dismisses alternative mitigation techniques, such as working in isolated settings or full-time teleworking, as less effective than the vaccine.
“Despite working in an isolated environment by [full-time] teleworking, an individual still has to interact with others in the local community, family, and friends,” the document notes. “Thus, working in an isolated environment removes risk from viral transmission to others at work, but it does not eliminate risk of infection and disease complications to the individual to include long-COVID symptoms, hospitalizations, ICU admissions, and deaths.”
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