Supreme Court Declines To Block New York COVID Vaccine Mandate For Health Care Workers
The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday declined to issue an injunction against New York’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate for health care workers, which doesn’t allow them to seek a religious exemption.
New York state imposed the vaccine mandate for doctors and nurses in August, which allows only for medical exemptions, not religious ones. The religious exemption policy expired in November.
The latest decision suggests the high court lacks the appetite to wade into the matter of mandates. The Supreme Court has previously rejected other challenges, including one that focused on Maine’s lack of a religious exemption to vaccine mandates for health care workers.
Petitioners, which included Christian doctors, said New York’s vaccine mandate violates the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment prohibition on religious discrimination on behalf of the government. They also argued that it violates federal civil rights law that requires businesses to accommodate employees’ religious beliefs.
Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, and Neil Gorsuch wrote they would have supported temporarily halting enforcement of New York’s mandate.– READ MORE
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