Justice Neil Gorsuch penned a scathing dissent after the Supreme Court left in place New York’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate for healthcare workers.
Only two other Republican-appointed justices, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, joined Gorsuch in support of an injunction. The highest court voted 6-3 Monday to reject a request by 20 anonymous doctors and medical facility workers, nearly all from Catholic backgrounds, to grant a religious exemption to the Empire State’s vaccine mandate for healthcare personnel.
“These applicants are not ‘anti-vaxxers’ who object to all vaccines,” Gorsuch wrote. “Instead, the applicants explain, they cannot receive a COVID–19 vaccine because their religion teaches them to oppose abortion in any form, and because each of the currently available vaccines has depended upon abortion-derived fetal cell lines in its production or testing.”
Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett, both of whom sided with Democratic-appointed justices to reject granting an emergency injunction over the New York mandate, said in October that the court’s emergency docket was not the proper place to resolve the merits of a similar challenge to Maine’s vaccine requirement and denied the petitioner’s request in that case. Thomas, Alito, and Gorsuch also dissented from the court’s decision not to intervene in the Maine case, with Gorsuch writing a dissenting opinion.
SUPREME COURT REJECTS RELIGIOUS CHALLENGE TO NEW YORK VACCINE MANDATE FOR HEALTHCARE WORKERS
New York introduced its vaccine mandate for healthcare workers while Andrew Cuomo still governed the state in August. His successor, Kathy Hochul, preserved the mandate. The vaccine requirement included a deadline of Nov. 22 for medical personnel to receive at least one dose of the vaccine to continue working, allowing for some medical exemptions — but not for religious reasons.
“In this case, no one seriously disputes that, absent relief, the applicants will suffer an irreparable injury,” wrote Gorsuch. “Not only does New York threaten to have them fired and strip them of unemployment benefits. This Court has held that ‘The loss of First Amendment freedoms, for even minimal periods of time, unquestionably constitutes irreparable injury.’”
So far, petitioners challenging various vaccine mandates across the country have not gained much favor in cases reaching the highest court, despite petitioners against the Biden administration’s vaccine mandate garnering victories in lower courts. Aside from refusing to grant relief to petitioners in Maine, the court also declined to block Indiana University from implementing a vaccine mandate for members of the institution.
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Barrett denied a bid in August by a group of students who asked the high court to block Indiana University’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate without issuing an explanation.
On Monday, Gorsuch concluded his dissenting opinion on the New York mandate by saying the justices were “stand[ing] silent as majorities invade the constitutional rights of the unpopular and unorthodox.” Gorsuch signaled optimism that the Supreme Court may eventually reach a different conclusion over vaccine mandate challenges, one that he believes would be more appealing to the public’s exercise of religious freedoms.
