Gorsuch Skewers SCOTUS For Ducking Covid Shot Mandate Case: ‘I hope, too, that one day soon this Court will choose to settle the question so that other Americans seeking to vindicate their civil rights do not suffer the same fate as those now before us.’

Richard Nixon Foundation/YOUTUBE

Gorsuch Skewers SCOTUS For Ducking Covid Shot Mandate Case

‘I hope, too, that one day soon this Court will choose to settle the question so that other Americans seeking to vindicate their civil rights do not suffer the same fate as those now before us.’

The U.S. Supreme Court ducked yet another case involving religious exemptions and vaccine mandates on Monday. And Justice Neil Gorsuch and a few of his colleagues were not shy about voicing their frustrations about it.

In its latest order list, the high court revealed that it will not take up and hear arguments in Doe v. Hochul next term. The case involves a challenge brought under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act by New York health care workers who were fired after choosing not to get the Covid shot due to their religious beliefs.

SCOTUS rules require that at least four justices must agree to hear a case before it can be considered by the full court. But according to Monday’s order list, only Justices Gorsuch, Clarence Thomas, and Samuel Alito were willing to hear the Doe case.

Writing on behalf of his fellow dissenters, Gorsuch noted how the district court and 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals dismissed the plaintiffs’ lawsuit, with the latter opting not to “assess the reasonableness of the plaintiffs’ requested accommodations.” He further observed how the circuit court reasoned that granting their sought-after religious accomodations “would have imposed an ‘undue hardship’ on their employers because it ‘would have required the [employers] to violate the state [vaccine] regulation’ and ‘subjected the [employers] to financial penalties or a suspension or revocation of their operating licenses.’”

“Soon after it decided this case, the Second Circuit reiterated its understanding of Title VII’s undue hardship defense, holding that ‘an accommodation that would require an employer to violate’ a state law necessarily ‘imposes an undue hardship’ — and does so even when the state law is ‘unconstitutional as applied’ to the plaintiff,” Gorsuch wrote. But “I harbor serious doubts about the Second Circuit’s rule.”

The Trump appointee went on to dissect the 2nd Circuit’s holding and lay out the legal rationale disputing it. More notably, however, he took to task the significance of the case and its importance to health care workers and other Americans across the country.

While noting that the Covid outbreak is over, Gorsuch pointed out how health care workers were heralded as “courageous[]” for “serv[ing] on the front line during a pandemic only then to lose their jobs” as the result of such mandates. He subsequently warned that, if the 2nd Circuit’s rule is permitted to dominate the country’s legal landscape, “civil rights protected by federal law will give way whenever a contrary state law — even an unconstitutional state law — is in play.” --->READ MORE HERE

CBS NEWS

Supreme Court rejects case over COVID-19 vaccine mandate for healthcare workers:

The Supreme Court on Monday turned away a legal battle involving New York's now-repealed mandate for healthcare workers to receive the COVID-19 vaccine during the pandemic.

The dispute arose after the New York Department of Health issued an emergency rule in 2021 that required all licensed healthcare workers to be fully vaccinated against COVID-19 to address the spread of the virus in medical facilities and nursing homes. State officials said the rule allowed healthcare employers to accommodate religious exemptions in certain ways, but did not permit blanket exemptions from the vaccine mandate.

The vaccine requirement was repealed as of October 2023 after the Biden administration ended the federal COVID-19 public health emergency.

A group of employees at New York healthcare facilities sought religious exemptions from the vaccine mandate, arguing that their sincerely held religious beliefs prevented them from receiving the COVID-19 shots. But their employers rejected the workers' requests for religious accommodations and fired them.

They then filed a lawsuit against Gov. Kathy Hochul and other state officials, as well as their employers — New York-Presbyterian Healthcare System, Trinity Health and Westchester Medical Center Advanced Physician Services.

The workers, who are unnamed in court papers, argued that their employers' refusal to grant exemptions violated Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, which prohibits workplace discrimination because of religion and requires employers to make religious accommodations unless doing so would impose an undue hardship on their business. --->READ MORE HERE

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