Pentagon’s ‘Blanket Denial’ of Religious Exemption Requests to Vaccine Prompts GOP Lawmakers to Demand Answers

Pentagon’s ‘Blanket Denial’ of Religious Exemption Requests to Vaccine Prompts GOP Lawmakers to Demand Answers
Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin at a meeting at the NATO headquarters in Brussels, on June 16, 2022. Valeria Mongelli/AFP via Getty Images
J.M. Phelps
Freelance reporter
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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.”

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