TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — Republican legislators moved Monday to make it easy for workers in Kansas to claim religious exemptions from COVID-19 vaccine mandates, but their leaders were divided over whether they also needed to promise unemployment benefits for people refusing the shots.

Republican leaders also faced a push by some conservatives to prohibit private employers from imposing their own vaccine mandates, whether or not President Joe Biden's mandates survive the lawsuits challenging them. That proposal emerged from a debate in the state Senate.

The GOP-controlled Legislature forced Democrat...