The Supreme Court has refused to block COVID-19 vaccination requirement for New York health care workers who seek religious exemption.
New York’s jab order does not offer an exemption for religious reasons, according to Associated Press. SCOTUS acted Monday on emergency appeals filed by doctors, nurses, and other medical workers who state they’re being forced to choose between keeping their careers and upholding their religious beliefs.
Justices Neil Gorsuch, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito dissented from the court’s order, which was not explained as typical in appeals. “Now, thousands of New York healthcare workers face the loss of their jobs and eligibility for unemployment benefits,” Gorsuch wrote in a 14-page opinion that Alito joined.
Gorsuch drew a comparison between the health care workers and the World War II-era Jehovah’s Witnesses schoolchildren who refused on religious grounds to stand and salute the American flag for the Pledge of Allegiance.
At first, SCOTUS refused to intervene when a Pennsylvania public school expelled the children. Three years later, the case was overruled in a landmark decision that declared schools couldn’t force students to salute the flag or recite the pledge.
“Today, our Nation faces not a world war but a pandemic. Like wars, though, pandemics often produce demanding new social rules aimed at protecting collective interests — and with those rules can come fear and anger at individuals unable to conform for religious reasons,” Gorsuch wrote.
As of Oct. 19, about 90 percent of health care workers were fully vaccinated and a majority of the rest had received one of two doses, the Associated Press reported. Fewer than 2 percent of nursing home, adult care facility, and hospital workers had sought a religious exemption, the state told the high court.
New York is one of just three states, alongside Maine and Rhode Island, that don’t accommodate health care workers who object to the vaccine on religious grounds.
The nation’s top judicial body had rejected a similar legal challenge filed by Maine health care workers back in October relating to the enforcement of COVID-19 vaccine mandates, which resulted in the same three justices dissenting.
This report is breaking and more information will be added as it becomes available.
