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BREAKING: U.S. Supreme Court Refuses to Block New York Healthcare Worker COVID-19 Jab Mandate That Doesn’t Allow Religious Exemptions


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A group of New York doctors, nurses, and other medical workers filed an emergency appeal to halt the state’s COVID-19 jab mandate on healthcare workers.

In their appeal, the medical professionals stated they were forced to choose between their jobs and religious beliefs.

New York is one of three states, along with Maine and Rhode Island, that does not accommodate healthcare workers that refuse vaccinations on religious grounds.

Earlier this year, the Supreme Court ruled in a 6-3 decision to turn away Maine healthcare workers that filed a similar appeal.

The court made the same ruling for New York healthcare workers and refused to block the state’s COVID-19 jab mandate that denies religious exemptions.

AP wrote:

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.

As FOX News mentioned, the litigation battle continues in the lower courts:

The vaccine mandate for health care workers, which went into effect in August, allows only for medical exemptions but not religious ones. The Supreme Court turned away two applications from doctors and nurses in the state for injunctive relief to allow religious exemptions while litigation continues in the lower courts over the mandate’s constitutionality.

cont.

Gorsuch wrote in his dissent that the mandate turns away the very doctors and nurses the state has depended on throughout the course of the pandemic.

“We do all this even though the State’s execu­tive decree clearly interferes with the free exercise of reli­gion—and does so seemingly based on nothing more than fear and anger at those who harbor unpopular religious be­liefs,” Gorsuch wrote.

“We allow the State to insist on the dismissal of thou­sands of medical workers—the very same individuals New York has depended on and praised for their service on the pandemic’s front lines over the last 21 months,” he continued. “To add in­sult to injury, we allow the State to deny these individuals unemployment benefits too. One can only hope today’s rul­ing will not be the final chapter in this grim story.”

While the final chapter in this battle has yet to be written, it’s a grim outlook of how the majority of our Supreme Court views religious exemptions to vaccine mandates.



 

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