The U.S. Supreme Court turned away a challenge to New York’s COVID vaccine requirement for healthcare workers, rejecting an appeal from 16 people who objected to the shot on religious grounds.
The rebuff leaves in place a requirement that opponents said caused 37,000 doctors, nurses and other healthcare workers to lose their jobs.
New York is one of three states, along with Maine and Rhode Island, that require vaccinations in the healthcare industry without allowing a faith-based exemption. New York’s mandate requires people to be vaccinated if they are in close contact with patients, residents or co-workers. The rule exempts people who have a medical reason for not getting vaccinated.
The Supreme Court has allowed state and local vaccine mandates, though it has curbed federal authority to impose requirements. The justices in January blocked a Biden administration rule that would have required shots or regular tests for more than 80 million employees of large businesses, while allowing a more targeted vaccine mandate for some healthcare workers.
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In dissent, Justice Clarence Thomas wrote that “there remains considerable confusion over whether a mandate, like New York’s, that does not exempt religious conduct can ever be neutral and generally applicable if it exempts secular conduct that similarly frustrates the specific interest that the mandate serves.”
Joined by Justices Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch, Thomas said that the case was “an obvious vehicle for resolving that conflict” and that the court shouldn’t “miss the chance” to consider a measure adopted during the pandemic for full briefing and argument, rather than as part of its emergency docket.
The high court’s denial is the second rejection for a group of providers who tried unsuccessfully to get exemptions last year. They said in court papers that 10 of them have lost their jobs and five have gotten shots under protest. Only one, a doctor who received a medical exemption, remains on the job without getting vaccinated.
The group said the state is violating the Constitution by allowing exemptions for medical reasons but not religious ones. The mandate “targets and forbids religious conduct, while permitting otherwise identical secular conduct,” the group said in court papers.
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New York Governor Kathy Hochul countered that “the presence of a single, limited medical exemption to a vaccine requirement does not require the state to provide a blanket religious exemption from vaccination.”
The New York-based 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals sided with the state.
The providers said they are Christians opposed to vaccines that have links to cell lines derived from aborted fetuses. The Moderna and Pfizer mRNA vaccines were tested using a cell line that originated with an aborted fetus in the 1970s. The Johnson & Johnson vaccine uses a different cell line during production and manufacturing. None of the vaccines contain aborted fetal cells.
