1. Short title This Act may be cited as the Conscience Objections to Negligent State COVID–19 Inoculation Edicts Need Constitutional Enforcement Act of 2023 or the CONSCIENCE Act of 2023 . 2. Findings and purpose (a) Findings Congress finds the following: (1) In response to the COVID–19 pandemic, State and local governments and private sector entities have implemented unprecedented public health requirements, including requirements that their employees, customers, and other persons receive a COVID–19 vaccine (referred to in this section as COVID–19 vaccine mandates ), resulting in millions of Americans being subject to such requirements. (2) Many COVID–19 vaccine mandates, due to their unprecedented magnitude and scope of application, and the unprecedented haste of and inattention to the religious exercise of persons subject to the mandates by the organizations implementing them, do not adequately protect the religious freedom of the persons subject to them. (3) As a result, millions of Americans have objected to COVID–19 vaccine mandates—more than for any other medical requirement for employment or for use of a public accommodation in recent history—often at great personal cost, on the basis that receiving a COVID–19 vaccine would violate their sincerely held religious beliefs. (4) COVID–19 vaccine mandates commonly threaten the rights of employees and other persons to religious exercise by requiring persons subject to the mandates to— (A) receive a COVID–19 vaccine (with respect to private entities, often under the color of law), in violation of their sincerely held religious beliefs