In an audacious act of overreach that should make every American scream, the Biden administration has tasked an obscure government agency with tracking federal employees seeking a religious exemption to his Constitutionally-questionable vaccine mandate.
Unless halted by a judge, beginning February 10 an independent entity within the Court Services and Offender Supervision Agency for the District of Columbia (CSOSA), the Pretrial Services Agency (PSA), will now oversee the newly created “Employee Religious Exception Request Information System,” according to a public notice filed in the Federal Register.
The PSA will process religious accommodation requests and store information about every federal employee, volunteer, intern, contractor, and consultant who falls under the mandate and requests a religious exemption.
“The primary purpose of the secured electronic file repository is to collect, maintain, use, and – to the extent appropriate and necessary – disseminate employee religious exception request information collected by the agency in the context of the federally mandated COVID-19 vaccination requirement,” the notice states.
(Video: Fox News)
The private and intensely personal information will be stored by the PSA in a secured electronic file repository “to log, track, and manage employee religious exception request information while leveraging technology to protect and secure the privacy of the records maintained in the system.”
A closer reading of the notice reveals that, in addition to tracking employees’ religious exemption requests in response to health emergencies, natural disasters, and whatever the government deems to fall under the umbrella of a “national or regional emergency,” the PSA will engage in lawfully collecting any “employee information or data that is necessary to ensure a safe and healthy environment for individuals who are occupying PSA facilities, attending PSA-sponsored events, or otherwise engaged in official business on behalf of the Agency.”
That, of course, could be interpreted to mean anything at any time.
Records collected may include an employee’s religious affiliation, date of birth, job title, home address, age, where they work, and copies of their accommodation requests and notes and decisions related to them, according to the notice.
But the Feds aren’t stopping there.
According to the Daily Signal, at least 18 additional federal agencies are looking to create their own Orwellian lists of religious vaccine objectors:
“The Federal Register revealed that 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.
“The list includes the Department of Justice, the Department of Health and Human Services, the Department of Transportation, and the Department of the Treasury, to
name only a few.”
Conservatives have been quick to sound the obvious alarms.
Discovery Institute senior fellow Wesley J. Smith appeared Friday on Fox News, calling the move “an obnoxious and outrageous chilling of free religious expression,” adding, “It seems to me that the point of keeping these records would be to first, keep people from seeking religious exemptions, and second, perhaps, to punish those who do.”
And Liberty Counsel founder and Chairman Mat Staver told The Center Square, “The federal government has no business to create a database of people who file religious exemptions.
“The only possible purpose this could have is to first identify and then to discriminate against people of faith. Knowing who files for religious exemptions serves no legitimate or lawful purpose,” Staver added. “A federal agency compiling a database of people who take their [faith] seriously sets a bad precedent, which is not surprising with the Biden administration that has been hostile to religious freedom.”
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Melissa Fine is the former executive editor of Casino Player, Strictly Slots, and Poker
Digest magazines. She is a UCLA graduate, news junkie, and dedicated Stargate SG-
1 fan. Melissa currently lives with her dog and two cats in a tiny town in the Sierra
Nevada foothills.
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