Following news that some federal agencies are looking to build a database of names of federal employees who sought religious exemptions from the COVID vaccine requirement, some conservative groups are sounding the alarm on the government's plan to track these people. Last week, the Heritage Foundation, a Washington D.C.-based conservative think tank, released a report saying there are up to 19 federal agencies that are proposing to track religious objectors to the COVID vaccine through a list.
According to the Christian Post, the Heritage Foundation's legal fellows at the organization's Edwin Meese III Center for Legal and Judicial Studies, Sarah Parshall Perry and GianCarlo Canaparo wrote in the report that based on the Federal Register, there are "at least 19 total federal agencies - including five cabinet level agencies - that have created or proposed to create these tracking lists for religious-exemption requests from their employees."
Perry and Canaparo reported that the federal government received "tens of thousands of religious exemption requests" as the country's largest employer which has more than four million civilian and military employees.
They added, "It now appears that an increasing number of federal agencies are keeping and preserving those individuals' names, religious information, personally identifying information, and other data stored in lists across multiple government agencies."
Perry and Canaparo said in the report that the lists of COVID vaccine opposers "will be shared between federal agencies" and includes information on a person's "religious affiliation, the reasons and support given for religious accommodation requests, names, contact information, date of birth, aliases, home address, contact information, and other identifying information."
The Heritage Foundation's commentary also cited Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt, who described the establishment of this type of database to have a "chilling effect on a citizens' exercise of religion."
Fox News reported that among the 19 federal agencies that want to track those who seek religious exemptions from COVID vaccines, the ones that are already mobilizing to collect data are the Departments of Justice, Interior, Treasury, Housing and Urban Development, and Transportation. George Washington University Law professor Jonathan Turley commented that this is "not surprising" because the government "does have to track its workforce."
But Alliance Defending Freedom's Ryan Bangert argued, "This is concerning because of the type of data that's being gathered. This data is being collected on a massive scale, and this is information about citizens' privately held religious beliefs."
Meanwhile, the Texas-based conservative law firm First Liberty Institute issued a statement on Friday in response to the Heritage Foundation's report, calling the new developments "alarming," "incredibly dangerous," and "dystopian." They also warned that "Tyranny and repression aren't too far away when the state begins to actively track the faithful."
The group warned that religious freedom in the U.S. is "greatly endangered" because of the government's decision to track those who seek religious exemptions from COVID vaccines.
