Queens Councilwoman Vickie Paladino, who began her tenure in the legislative body by declaring that she did not expect to comply with public-health rules set for all, received a religious accommodation to avoid having to present evidence of COVID-19 vaccination to enter the Council chambers.
Curiously, Paladino is a Roman Catholic, a religion whose top authority has said vaccination is a “moral obligation.” On its face, this would seem to preclude any serious claim that getting the jab was an affront to deeply held religious beliefs; paired with the speed at which the determination was made, this suggests a cursory process at best.
Some might suggest that the profoundly personal realm of religious belief should lead city officials to defer to requestors. They would be wrong; the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which oversees compliance with laws against workplace discrimination, notes in COVID-19 vaccination guidance that “if an employer has an objective basis for questioning either the religious nature or the sincerity of a particular belief, the employer would be justified in making a limited factual inquiry and seeking additional supporting information.” Conscientious objector status is not taken for granted.
It’s not clear what documentation Paladino could have provided that could prove she sincerely ascribed to the teachings of the Catholic Church except on the issue of vaccination, as neither her request nor the response to it are a matter of public record. If she opposes the jab because its testing and development included the use of old fetal stem cell lines, well, so do common drugs including acetaminophen and ibuprofen. What is clear is that, while the majority of city worker accommodation requests have been denied in what has been a generally slow-moving process, Paladino got a quick and amenable answer.
Contrary to her son’s public claims, it doesn’t appear that Council Speaker Adrienne Adams was in any way involved in the decision, which instead was left to the Council’s own EEOC office. These accommodations should be a high bar reserved for legitimate faith-based objections; they should not be a get-out-of-the-lifesaving-mandate-free card.