The U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) recently issued a new proposed rule that not only greatly expands the number of federal contractors who can claim religious exemptions but also expands the scope of those exemptions.
Under this rule, any federal contractor—even a construction company, janitorial service, or healthcare provider—can claim a religious mission and refuse to hire atheists, religious minorities, LGBTQ people, even single parents, women who use contraception or get an abortion, or anyone else they disapprove of.
If you work for a federal contractor and don’t share the same religious beliefs as your boss, you could lose your job.
This affects a huge sector of the economy—in 2018, the government spent $560 billion on federal contracts, and in 2017, there were over 4.1 million workers employed by government contractors.
When a business contracts with the federal government to provide services to the American people, it should be held to a high level of accountability. Instead, this rule would give such businesses a license to discriminate—just by claiming to be religious.
No one should get special privileges based on their religious beliefs—and they certainly shouldn’t be able to use them to discriminate against others!
Please take action now and share this message with everyone you can.
September 16th is the deadline for us to send as many comments as possible to DOL. If you or someone you know will be directly affected by these broad new religious exemptions, this is your chance to tell DOL.
Image by Gage Skidmore under CC BY-SA 2.0
