Pentagon’s ‘Blanket Denial’ of Religious Exemption Requests to Vaccine Prompts GOP Lawmakers to Demand Answers
More than a dozen Republican lawmakers have called on Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin to answer questions following the circulation earlier this month of a leaked memo by the Pentagon’s watchdog that found “potential noncompliance” with the law in the review and denial process of religious accommodation requests to the vaccine mandate.
The June 2 memo by Acting Inspector General (IG) Sean W. O’Donnell states that after reviewing dozens of denials of religious accommodation requests, the IG’s office “found a trend of generalized assessments rather than the individualized assessment that is required by Federal law and DoD and Military Service policies.”…