Dec. 13 (UPI) — The Supreme Court on Monday turned down a pair of emergency requests from a group of 20 doctors and nurses seeking to block the state of New York’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate for healthcare workers.
Three of the high court’s conservative justices — Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch and Samuel Alito — dissented, saying they would have approved an injunction to temporarily enjoin New York’s mandate because it failed to include a religious exemption.
Former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo in August announced the requirement for staff at hospitals and long-term care facilities, including nursing homes, adult care, and other congregate care settings.
It originally included “limited exceptions for those with religious or medical reasons,” but the state later revised the order to remove the exception on religious grounds, prompting a suit from the doctors and nurses who asserted their First Amendment rights were violated by the move.
They claimed their religious beliefs prevented them from consenting to vaccines tested, developed or produced with fetal cell lines derived from procured abortions.
In October, U.S. District Court Judge David Hurd issued a preliminary injunction halting enforcement of the vaccine mandate.
“The Department of Health is barred from interfering in any way with the granting of religious exemptions from COVID-19 vaccination going forward, or with the operation of exemptions already granted,” Hurd wrote in his 27-page ruling.
That ruling, however, was overturned by a federal appellate court two weeks later, prompting current New York Gov. Kathy Hochul to “commend the 2nd Circuit’s findings affirming our first-in-the-nation vaccine mandate.”
“I will continue to do everything in my power to keep New Yorkers safe,” she added.
The workers appealed to the Supreme Court to reinstate the injunction, but on Monday were turned down by a majority of the high court justices.
In arguing to uphold the mandate, New York Attorney General Letitia James cited the high court’s recent decision denying a request to strike down a similar Maine regulation requiring healthcare workers to receive a COVID-19 vaccination without providing a religious exemption.
“The rule’s medical exemption is tightly constrained in both scope and duration,” she wrote, “and it serves rather than undermines the rule’s objective of protecting the health of healthcare workers.”
Thomas, Alito and Gorsuch wrote in a 14-page dissent that Hochul’s record in the case “practically exudes suspicion of those who hold unpopular religious beliefs,” adding, “That alone is sufficient to render the mandate unconstitutional as applied to these applicants.”
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