The challenges brought by a group of Christian medical professionals and an organization that promotes vaccine skepticism to New York’s refusal to allow religious exemptions to COVID-19 vaccine mandate for healthcare workers was rejected on Monday by the US Supreme Court.
The court was asked in two cases for an injunction requiring the state to permit religious exemptions while litigation over the mandate’s legality continues in lower courts, but the justices denied emergency requests.
They previously rejected other challenges to jab mandates, including the one based on Maine’s lack of a religious exemption for healthcare workers.
The legal challenge initiators claimed that New York’s mandate violates the First Amendment of the US Constitution that prohibits religious discrimination by the government as well as the federal civil rights law requiring employers to reasonably accommodate employees’ religious beliefs.
According to the mandate imposed by the New York’s Department of Health on Aug. 26, the healthcare professionals who come in contact with patients, as well as other employees, had until Sept. 27 to get vaccinated, but the deadline was later delayed to Nov. 22.
The state allowed a narrow medical exemption for a small number of medical professionals with a serious allergic reaction to the COVID-19 vaccines and said that employees can be reassigned to jobs such as remote work, noting there are also no religious exemptions for vaccine mandates for measles and rubella.
One of the lawsuits was filed by 17 mostly Catholic healthcare providers – including doctors and nurses – 16 of which were fired or suspended under the policy, who denounced “medical dictatorship”, but the court refused it, saying it was only based on fear and anger.
The other lawsuit was filed by three Christian nurses and the organization they’re members of, We the Patriots USA, which opposes vaccine mandates and advocates medical freedom.
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