'We Fail Ourselves': Gorsuch Scalds High Court for Rejecting Religious Exemptions After NY Governor Speaks for God
The U.S. Supreme Court has refused to block a New York state COVID-19 vaccine requirement for health care workers that does not offer a religious exemption.
The court acted on Monday, rejecting the emergency appeal filed by 20 Christian doctors, nurses, and other medical workers who say they are being forced to choose between their jobs and religious beliefs.
The mandate, issued by former Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D), originally had a religious exemption included. Then it was revised to allow medical exceptions but not religious exemptions before it went into effect in late August under Gov. Kathy Hochul (D). New York's mandate is especially harsh because it also denies unemployment benefits to health care workers who get fired for seeking a religious exemption.
Justices Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch, and Samuel Alito would have voted in favor of blocking the mandate, but they were in the minority.
"Now, thousands of New York healthcare workers face the loss of their jobs and eligibility for unemployment benefits," Gorsuch wrote in a blistering 14-page opinion that Alito joined.
New York is one of just three states that does not accommodate health care workers who object to the vaccine on religious grounds. The other states are Maine and Rhode Island.
As CBN News reported in October, the court had previously turned away health care workers in Maine, who filed a similar challenge, with the same three justices in dissent.
As of Oct. 19, roughly 90% of health care workers in the Empire State were fully vaccinated and most of the rest had received one of two doses, New York told the high court. Fewer than 2% of nursing homes, adult care facilities, and hospital workers had sought a religious exemption, the state said.
'State's Executive Decree Clearly Interferes with the Free Exercise of Religion'
In his dissent, Justice Gorsuch drew a link between the health care workers and the World War II-era Jehovah's Witnesses schoolchildren who refused on religious grounds to stand and salute the American flag for the Pledge of Allegiance.
The court at first refused to intervene when a public school in Pennsylvania expelled the children. But three years later, the justices overruled the earlier case in a landmark decision that declared schools couldn't force students to salute the flag or recite the pledge.
"Today, our Nation faces not a world war but a pandemic. Like wars, though, pandemics often produce demanding new social rules aimed at protecting collective interests — and with those rules can come fear and anger at individuals unable to conform for religious reasons," Gorsuch wrote.
"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," he wrote.
Gorsuch noted that New York's regulation penalizes health care professionals who have worked on the frontlines since the COVID-19 pandemic began.
"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," the justice 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."
"This record practically exudes suspicion of those who hold unpopular religious beliefs," the justice argued. "That alone is sufficient to render the mandate unconstitutional."
In a statement, Thomas More Society Special Counsel Christopher Ferrara agreed with Justice Gorsuch.
"In his searing 14-page dissent, clearly written for the history books, Justice Gorsuch rightly expresses his frustration over the Court's refusal to prevent the irreparable harm caused by a 'vaccine mandate' that targets religious objectors to COVID-19 vaccination in the health care workforce for professional destruction, denying them even unemployment benefits, because—as the intolerant Governor of New York puts it—they 'are not doing what God wants," Ferrara said.
"It is astonishing that the Court tolerates this blatant invasion of religious freedom by a bigoted Governor and her health bureaucrats on the pretext of a never-ending 'emergency' that morphs as rapidly as the virus itself. And this for the sake of mandatory vaccination with vaccines everyone now knows have failed to prevent transmission of the virus. The word irrational only begins to describe the institutional insanity the Court should have restrained," the Thomas More attorney noted.
"One can only hope that as the examples of this tyranny multiply and pile up on the Court's doorstep, the majority will finally do what it did last year in striking down New York's absurd church closures in the name of "public health"—the right thing. Meanwhile, one can only agree with Justice Gorsuch's assessment of the Court's refusal to act in the face of New York's naked oppression of a religious minority: 'Today, we do not just fail the applicants. We fail ourselves'," Ferrara concluded.
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