Important Takeaways:

• U.S. senator warns scheme ‘represents a grave violation of religious liberty as protected under the First Amendment’
• In a day when the federal government sends grandmothers to jail for advocating for the lives of the unborn, insists it can coerce Christian companies to pay for abortion and promote an LGBT ideology that is out of mainstream, and more, a federal bureaucracy’s blast against religious freedom shouldn’t, perhaps, be a surprise.
• It is the U.S. Department of Energy that has begun tracking employees’ beliefs through a plan to monitor employment accommodations.
• And Sen. James Lankford, R-Okla., is objecting.
• He wrote Ann Dunkin, a DOE official, to “express my strong opposition to the Department of Energy’s recent notice regarding the establishment of a new system of records…”
• He warned the agenda “represents a grave violation of religious liberty as protected under the First Amendment and the Religious Freedom Restoration Act.”
• …its policy that requires the agency “to collect and store detailed information regarding requests for religious exemptions to various mandates,” the report said.
• The DOE has claimed its accumulation of information about employees’ beliefs is needed to “collect, maintain, and disseminate records on employees and applicants for employment who seek and receive medical and non-medical accommodations.”
• The report said Lankford has concerns that “collecting detailed records on an individual’s sincerely held religious beliefs and practices — alongside other personal and sensitive information — poses a significant threat to the privacy and religious freedoms of federal employees.”

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