Supreme Court Turns Away Requests to Block New York’s Healthcare Vaccine Mandate

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday, Dec. 13, in an unsigned order, turned away two attempts at blocking New York state’s vaccine mandate for healthcare workers, reversing a recent trend among federal courts that have not upheld a variety of COVID-19 vaccine mandates. As Amy Howe wrote in the online publication SCOTUSBlog on Monday evening, “The Supreme Court on Monday turned down two requests to block New York’s vaccine mandate for health care workers. Two groups of health care workers are challenging the mandate, arguing that it violates their constitutional right to freely exercise their religion. But over the public dissents of three conservative justices, the court denied the workers’ requests to put the mandate on hold while litigation continues. The dispute centers on a regulation issued by New York’s state health department that requires all health care workers in the state to be vaccinated against COVID-19 unless they qualify for a medical exemption. The regulation does not contain a religious exemption.”

Further, Howe wrote, “The challengers went to federal court, contending that they cannot comply without violating their religious beliefs because the three vaccines available in the United States all were tested or developed with cells descended from decades-old aborted fetal cells. One set of challengers told the justices that the vaccine mandate ‘imposes an unconscionable choice on New York healthcare workers: abandon their faith or lose their careers and their best means to provide for their families.’ The use of historical fetal cell lines is routine in the development and testing of drugs and vaccines, and the COVID vaccines themselves do not contain aborted fetal cells. The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and other anti-abortion religious leaders have said it is ethically acceptable to receive the vaccines,” Howe noted.

What’s more, she wrote, “After the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit declined to freeze New York’s mandate earlier this fall, the health care workers came to the Supreme Court, asking the justices to intervene on an emergency basis. The workers told the court that, like restrictions imposed on worship services to combat the spread of COVID-19, “vaccine mandates raise difficult questions about balancing indubitably strong public health interests on one side and core constitutional rights on the other.” However, the workers continued, “it is not difficult to see that New York’s uniquely punitive treatment of religious objectors, which is an extreme outlier nationally, violates the Free Exercise Clause.” They complained that New York had originally included a religious exemption but then eliminated it while maintaining a medical exemption.”

Meanwhile, as The New York Times’s Adam Liptak wrote on Monday, “As is often the court’s practice in rulings on emergency applications, its unsigned order included no reasoning. But Justice Neil M. Gorsuch filed a 14-page dissent saying that the majority had betrayed the court’s commitment to religious liberty. Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. joined Justice Gorsuch’s dissent. Justice Clarence Thomas also said he would have blocked the vaccine requirement, but he gave no reasons. The Supreme Court in October refused to provide relief to health care workers in Maine who had made an essentially identical request in a challenge to a similar state requirement, over the dissents of the same three justices. The court has also rejected challenges to vaccination requirements at Indiana University, for personnel in New York City’s school system and for workers at a Massachusetts hospital. The court also rejected a challenge to a federal mandate requiring masks for air travel. Those rulings were all issued by only one justice, which can be a sign that the legal questions involved were not considered substantial. But those rulings did not involve religion.”

Explaining the background to today’s decision, The Washington Post’s Robert Barnes wrote on Monday evening that “New York in August announced the vaccine requirement for health care workers, with exceptions both for religious and medical reasons. But eight days later, after the Food and Drug Administration gave full approval to the Pfizer vaccine, New York says its health department narrowed the medical exception and eliminated the one for religious objectors. The workers, represented by the Thomas More Society and Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, said the action violated constitutional protections for religious exercise and a federal law that requires accommodations for religious workers. But the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit upheld the order.” And he quoted New York Attorney General Letitia James, who had written in a brief to the Supreme Court that, “As the Second Circuit found, nothing in this record indicates any hostility to or singling out of religious beliefs that would render the emergency rule nonneutral. Nor does the availability of a medical exemption undercut the rule’s general applicability. The rule’s medical exemption is tightly constrained in both scope and duration … and it serves rather than undermines the rule’s objective of protecting the health of health care workers.”

As Barnes noted, “Court documents indicated about 96 percent of the state’s health care workers are vaccinated. Of those remaining, far more were claiming a religious objection than a medical exemption.”