Justices won’t block vaccine mandate for NY health workers
AP, December 13, 2021
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme
Court refused Monday to halt a COVID-19 vaccine requirement for health care
workers in New York that does not offer an exemption for religious reasons.
The court acted on emergency
appeals filed by doctors, nurses and other medical workers who say they are
being forced to choose between their jobs and religious beliefs.
As is typical in such appeals, the
court did not explain its order, although it has similarly refused to get in
the way of vaccine mandates elsewhere.
Justices Neil Gorsuch, Clarence
Thomas and Samuel Alito dissented. “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.
New York is one of just three
states, along with Maine and Rhode Island, that do not accommodate health care
workers who object to the vaccine on religious grounds.
The court had previously turned
away health care workers in Maine, who filed a similar challenge, with the same
three justices in dissent.
As of Oct. 19, roughly 90% of
health care workers were fully vaccinated and most of the rest had received one
of two doses, the state told the high court. Fewer than 2% of nursing home,
adult care facility and hospital workers had sought a religious exemption, the
state said.
In his dissent, Gorsuch drew a
link 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.
The court at first refused to
intervene when a public school in Pennsylvania expelled the children. But three
years later, the justices overruled the earlier case 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.
