U.S. Supreme Court declines to block New York vaccine mandate

The Supreme Court refused on Monday to block New York’s vaccine mandate that requires healthcare workers to get vaccinated against COVID-19, even when their objections are based on religious beliefs.

The Supreme Court’s ruling came after doctors and nurses challenged the vaccine requirement claiming it violated their right to exercise their faith. The mandate allows people to apply for medical exemptions but not religious ones.

The healthcare workers said the mandate “imposes an unconscionable choice on New York health care workers: abandon their faith or lose their careers and their best means to provide for their families.”

Supreme Court Justices Neil Gorsuch, Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas dissented, claiming that the mandate betrayed religious liberty.

“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,” Justice Gorsuch wrote in his 14-page dissent. “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.”

New York State has lost around 4 percent of its healthcare workforce due to the vaccine mandate, which was issued by Governor Kathy Hochul on August 26 and went into effect a month later. In October, New York’s largest healthcare provider had to fire around 1,400 unvaccinated workers.

Workers who had requested religious exemptions were allowed to work until November 22 but then had to either get vaccinated or be put on unpaid leave. The rule covers healthcare workers in hospitals, nursing homes, home health agencies, hospices and adult centers.

New York’s Solicitor General Barbara Underwood responded to the allegations by comparing the vaccine mandate to the longstanding requirements for measles and rubella vaccines, which don’t allow religious exemptions. “Achieving high vaccination rates in particularly vulnerable settings is of the utmost importance,” she said.

The Supreme Court has also rejected other challenges to vaccination requirements in Maine, at Indiana University, for workers at a Massachusetts hospital, and for personnel in New York City’s school system.