WASHINGTON, D.C. – Fifty-five federal departments and agencies have created 57 rule changes to track federal employees or applicants who seek exemptions. Some are limited to COVID shot exemptions. Others track all exemptions, such as an employee or applicant seeking an accommodation from working on the Sabbath or Sunday. Some track visitors to their buildings or events.
While there are variations between these rules, all of them are causing serious concern about invasive privacy violations by the federal government recording and permanently storing religious and medical data on those seeking exemptions.
See below for the full list with hyperlinks included.
The Treasury Department’s Office of Civil Rights and Diversity stated its database will document all religious exemption requests and denials. It will track and maintain “information about a requestor’s religious beliefs” as well as the “informal dispute resolution” of each person. It will also record “correspondence,” “supporting notes and documentation” and even “records of oral conversations,” on every person who requests an exemption. This database will track and record this level of information for everyone from “pre-employment, during current or former employment or for [attendees at] a particular event.”
In addition, the largest branch in the military, the U.S. Army, is not content to just record the “religious preference” of their employees. The Army is pairing this religious information with biometric data, like fingerprints and digital photographs.
In response to a few of these rules being discovered, Rep. Ralph Norman (R-SC) introduced HR 6502, known as the “Religious Freedom Over Mandates Act,” on January 25, 2022. It has been referred to the House Committee on Energy and Commerce. This one-paragraph bill would “prohibit the use of federal funds for any system of records on religious accommodations with respect to any COVID–19 vaccination requirement.” However, this list has grown significantly since the bill was introduced.
Six of these government agencies have proposed growing their database but are still in the public comment period. These include the Social Security Administration, Agriculture Department, Court Services and Offender Supervision Agency for the District of Columbia, the Department of Justice, the Selective Service System and the Department of Commerce.
Pretrial Services Agency (PSA) for the District of Columbia published a proposal in the Federal Register for an “Employee Religious Exception Request Information System” that would record “personal religious information” of employees with “religious accommodation requests for religious exception from the federally mandated vaccination requirement.”
On January 24, Rep. Ben Cline (R-VA) sent a letter signed by ten Republican members of Congress to Joe Biden condemning his administration for keeping a list of federal employees who applied for a religious exemption for the COVID-19 shot.
The letter reads, “From day one, your administration has displayed a consistent attitude of contempt towards Americans who prioritize faith in their lives.”
Rep. Cline was joined by fellow Virginia Congressman Rep. Bob Good (R-VA), Rep. Andy Biggs (R-AZ), Rep. Jeff Duncan (R-SC), Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), Rep. Alex Mooney (R-WV), Rep. Tom Tiffany (R-WI), Rep. Ralph Norman (R-SC), Rep. Mary Miller (R-IL) and Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX).
The members of Congress also wrote, “It has also been discovered that your administration has not limited its executive overreach to the Pretrial Services Agency. Reporting from the Daily Signal has confirmed that ‘at least 19 total federal agencies–including five cabinet level agencies’ have created or have proposed to create tracking lists for religious exemption requests for their employees from the COVID-19 vaccine mandate. A majority of the notices do not explain how long the agency plans to store the data, why the agency needs to share the data between federal agencies or why the agency needs to keep the data beyond a decision to grant or deny an employee's religious accommodation request. Your administration has offered no valid justification for these intrusive databases that will only be used to target Americans who have refused a COVID-19 vaccine because of their religious convictions.”
Here is the full list of the rule changes in the following departments. This list is organized by the date changes were finalized. It includes two departments that propose two separate changes:
- Department of the Army, Department of Defense
- Homeland Security Department
- Department of Labor, Office of Assistant Secretary for Administration and Management
- Nuclear Regulatory Commission
- Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation
- Department of the Treasury, Office of Civil Rights and Diversity
- Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service
- Office of Personnel Management
- Securities and Exchange Commission (with a second rule)
- Office of Government Ethics
- Postal Regulatory Commission
- Department of the Interior
- Federal Reserve System
- Federal Trade Commission
- United States Commission on Civil Rights
- General Services Administration
- National Transportation Safety Board
- U.S. International Development Finance Corporation
- National Aeronautics and Space Administration
- Department of Housing and Urban Development
- Trade and Development Agency
- Export-Import Bank of the United States
- Architectural and Transportation Barriers Compliance Board
- Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation
- Farm Credit Administration
- Department of Transportation
- Federal Housing Finance Agency
- Federal Housing Finance Agency, Office of Inspector General
- Federal Retirement Thrift Investment Board
- Corporation for National and Community Service
- Small Business Administration
- U.S. Railroad Retirement Board
- Department of Health and Human Services, Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services
- Peace Corps
- Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission
- Federal Energy Regulatory Commission
- Federal Mine Safety and Health Review Commission
- Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service
- Department of Health and Human Services
- United States International Trade Commission (with a second rule)
- Environmental Protection Agency
- Commodity Futures Trading Commission
- National Indian Gaming Commission
- Surface Transportation Board
- Consumer Product Safety Commission
- Special Counsel Office
- U.S. Merit Systems Protection Board
- Department of Transportation, Maritime Administration
- Federal Election Commission
- Social Security Administration
- Agriculture Department*
- Court Services and Offender Supervision Agency for the District of Columbia*
- Department of Justice*
- Selective Service System*
- Department of Commerce*
(*change is still under public comment period)
Liberty Counsel Action Chairman Mat Staver said, “IBM created a database of the Jewish people in Europe. Using this database, Nazis were able to identify the Jews and prohibit them from public and then private employment. This database is what enabled Nazis to round up those targeted for ghettos and concentration camps. The federal government has started its own database on Americans of faith. We cannot allow this to happen. We cannot allow a federal database categorizing people by their religion or medical status. What possible good can be accomplished by these government lists? I cannot think of one.”
