The Supreme Courtroom declined Thursday to take up a authorized problem introduced by well being care staff in New York who oppose the state’s vaccination mandate on non secular grounds.
Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch stated the court docket ought to have taken the case.
When the requirement was first imposed in August to assist stop the unfold of the most recent coronavirus variant, it allowed exceptions based mostly on medical causes or non secular objections. However the non secular exemption was later eliminated.
Gov. Kathy Hochul, who’s Roman Catholic, stated that she wasn’t conscious of any “sanctioned non secular objection from any organized faith” and that non secular leaders, together with the pope, had been encouraging folks to get vaccinated.
Sixteen well being care staff sued, saying that they had non secular objections as a result of fetal cell traces had been concerned within the testing, improvement or manufacturing of Covid vaccines. They stated the mandate violated their non secular freedom as a result of it allowed others who had been unvaccinated to proceed working.
Legal professionals for the state stated the Covid mandate was just like long-standing guidelines requiring well being care staff to be vaccinated in opposition to measles and rubella. These necessities, too, permit exemptions just for medical causes. Laboratory-grown stem cells, which derive from cells collected from a fetus almost 50 years in the past, had been additionally used to check the rubella vaccine, the state stated.
“The presence of a single, restricted medical exemption to a vaccine requirement doesn’t require the State to offer a blanket non secular exemption from vaccination,” they stated of their written submissions.
Writing for the three dissenters, Thomas stated confusion stays a couple of mandate that gives no non secular exemption, like New York’s. He stated the court docket ought to have taken the case now to move off comparable confusion sooner or later.
In December, the Supreme Courtroom declined to briefly block the vaccination requirement within the case. Thomas, Alito and Gorsuch stated then that the court docket ought to have granted the request to place the mandate on maintain.
Since final fall, the court docket has declined to dam different vaccination mandates that don’t present for non secular exemptions, making use of to New York academics, Navy sailors, well being care staff in Maine and Massachusetts, and school college students in Indiana.