The LC has also worked against vaccine mandates for decades. Supreme Court cited an LC brief in its June 24 decision to end 50 years of abortion protection.

The LC is an anti-LGBTQ hate group, but it works on various cultural issues popular with the hard right under the guise of religious activism. The leak also shows the LC stored a trove of misinformation regarding COVID-19 vaccines. Hatewatch reviewed metadata from the files and public information suggesting that some of these requests were created by outside parties, including an employee of the SPLC-designated anti-LGBTQ hate group Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) and Andrew Torba, the CEO of Gab, a social media site popular with the hard right. The documents include LC’s boilerplate religious exemption requests for various faiths, students, employees and pastors. Hatewatch then reviewed the documents on the LC website when it was back online.

Transparency collective Distributed Denial of Secrets, which provides access to journalists, allowed Hatewatch to review the documents. The hacker released the leak on Enlace Hacktivista, a hacktivist site. However, the LC website was down after a hacker who identifies with the Anonymous movement exploited vulnerabilities in the website’s software. Most of the documents are publicly available on the LC website. Hatewatch reviewed over 40 documents from a leak of files showing the LC’s anti-vaccine and health protocol activism.

Mass religious vaccine exemption letter