The Supreme Corut today rejected a request from over 2,000 health care workers in Maine to stop the state’s COVID vaccine mandate that would make them lose their jobs if they don’t get the COVID vaccine despite their religious objections to it.
Some of the health care workers are Christians who object to the COVID vaccine because the vaccines were made with or tested on cells from babies killed in abortions.
The high court in October rejected an emergency request by the same plaintiffs seeking to prevent Maine from enforcing the mandate against them, and conservative justices dissented from the decision. This time, it left intact a federal appeals court decision letting Maine fully enforce Governor Janet Mills’s mandate that required all healthcare workers in Maine to be fully vaccinated by the end of October. Maine is one of only three states, including New York and Rhode island, that refuse to include religious exemptions.
Liberty Counsel is representing the health care workers and it explains that Maine is ignoring federal law by removing religious exemptions and accommodations from unlawful COVID shot mandates for health care workers, many of whom have already been terminated from employment. In addition, these health care heroes cannot simply walk across the street to a different health care provider to obtain alternative employment. Governor Mills has created a situation where no religious objectors to the COVID shot can obtain employment in the state.
The Christian legal group filed a petition for a writ of certiorari, asking for that full briefing and argument at SCOTUS, but the court denied the petition Tuesday.
The lawsuit is still alive at the lower court, however, and the legal battle continues even though SCOTUS refused to stop the mandate on an emergency basis while the case moves forward.
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“Only Maine, New York, and Rhode Island have state executive orders banning employers from even considering the sincere religious beliefs of employees. Governor Mills threatened to revoke the business license of any employer that granted an employee a religious exemption, thus ordering employers to disobey the federal law known as Title VII. However, states do not have the authority to order employers to disobey Title VII federal employment law that prohibits religious discrimination,” Liberty Counsel said in challenging the mandate.
It added:
All health care workers are protected by Title VII of the Civil Rights Act which does provide for religious exemptions and accommodations and requires that employers provide them. Furthermore, COVID shots cannot be mandatory under Title VII. Religious exemption requests for shot mandates must be accommodated when a reasonable accommodation exists without undue hardship to the employer. Many people hold sincere religious beliefs against taking any vaccines, or taking those derived from aborted fetal cell lines, or taking those sold by companies that profit from the sale of vaccines and other products derived from abortion.
Further, all health care workers in Maine that are employed by the state also have protection for the exercise of their sincerely held religious beliefs under the First Amendment. These employees do not shed their constitutional rights upon entering government employment. Maine law provides a long-established common law right to all individuals to refuse unwanted medical care.
Liberty Counsel Founder and Chairman Mat Staver said, “There can be no dispute that Maine is required to abide by federal law that provides protections to employees who have sincerely held religious objections to the COVID-19 shots. It is time for the High Court to stop this unlawful mandate against all these health care workers who have become constitutional orphans in their own state.”
In the Supreme Court’s October 29 decision, Justice Gorsuch dissented from the denial along with Justice Thomas and Justice Alito.
Gorsuch wrote, “This case presents an important constitutional question, a serious error, and an irreparable injury. Where many other States have adopted religious exemptions, Maine has charted a different course. There, healthcare workers who have served on the front line of a pandemic for the last 18 months are now being fired and their practices shuttered. All for adhering to their constitutionally protected religious beliefs. Their plight is worthy of our attention.”
Gorsuch wrote:
“Maine has adopted a new regulation requiring certain healthcare workers to receive COVID–19 vaccines if they wish to keep their jobs. Unlike comparable rules in most other States, Maine’s rule contains no exemption for those whose sincerely held religious beliefs preclude them from accepting the vaccination. The applicants before us are a physician who operates a medical practice and eight other healthcare workers. No one questions that these individuals have served patients on the front line of the COVID–19 pandemic with bravery and grace for 18 months now. Yet, with Maine’s new rule coming into effect, one of the applicants has already lost her job for refusing to betray her faith; another risks the imminent loss of his medical practice. The applicants ask us to enjoin further enforcement of Maine’s new rule as to them, at least until we can decide whether to accept their petition for certiorari. I would grant that relief.”
“No one questions that protecting patients and healthcare workers from contracting COVID–19 is a laudable objective. But Maine does not suggest a worker who is unvaccinated for medical reasons is less likely to spread or contract the virus than someone who is unvaccinated for religious reasons. Nor may any government blithely assume those claiming a medical exemption will be more willing to wear protective gear, submit to testing, or take other precautions than someone seeking a religious exemption,” wrote Gorsuch.
Gorsuch concluded his dissent: “This case presents an important constitutional question, a serious error, and an irreparable injury. Where many other States have adopted religious exemptions, Maine has charted a different course. There, healthcare workers who have served on the front line of a pandemic for the last 18 months are now being fired and their practices shuttered. All for adhering to their constitutionally protected religious beliefs. Their plight is worthy of our attention.”
Justice Barrett, joined by Kavanaugh, concurred in the denial of injunctive relief, noting that the injunction pending a cert petition is an extraordinary request that would require the High Court to rule on the merits before it had the opportunity for full briefing and argument.
About a year ago, the Vatican declared that it is morally acceptable for Catholics to take vaccines even if they use cell lines create from aborted babies because of the vaccines’ life-saving impact.
Other Catholic and pro-life leaders, however, argue that any connection between the vaccines and the killing of unborn babies in abortions is immoral.
None of the vaccines contain cells from aborted babies, but they all have links to abortion, some more-so than others.
The companies Johnson & Johnson and AstraZeneca used cell lines created from babies who were aborted decades ago in the development and testing of their vaccines. The connections between abortion and the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines are much more limited, with cell lines created from aborted babies used only in testing the products.
The Charlotte Lozier Institute has a list of the vaccines with information about whether cell lines created from aborted babies were used in testing and/or production. Find it here.
