A group of New York healthcare workers is asking the United States Supreme Court to intervene and issue an emergency injunction as they fight to protect their Constitutional right to religious freedom. Thomas More Society attorneys are representing 17 doctors, nurses, and other medical professionals who are battling the State of New York’s patently unconstitutional COVID vaccination mandate for health care workers.

Tom Brejcha who is counsel of record on the SCOTUS filing, explained that “The lawsuit arises from New York’s extraordinarily punitive COVID vaccine mandate. The United States District Court rightly held that the mandate is not a neutral law, but a religious gerrymander that targets religious opposition to the available COVID-19 vaccines. Medical exemptions are permitted, but religious exemptions are barred.”

Thomas More Society Special Counsel Christopher A. Ferrara, who is lead counsel in the district court proceedings, added that “Two doctors working in the same hospital, with the same patients, are treated differently based on nothing but the religious motivation of the one seeking a religious exemption versus the one seeking a medical exemption. The unprecedented First Amendment violation could not be more apparent.”

“Also unprecedented in this case,” said Ferrara, “are outrageous statements by New York Governor Hochul, who is conducting a veritable religious crusade to force medical professionals to be vaccinated. She had the audacity to declare that those who decline to be vaccinated ‘aren’t listening to God and what God wants’ and that ‘everybody from the Pope on down is encouraging people to get vaccinated.’  In other words, doctors and nurses will be fired if they dissent from Hochul’s religious view on vaccination. This is incredible.”

The lawsuit, originally filed in federal district court on September 13, 2021, resulted in an initial temporary restraining order against New York Governor Kathy Hochul and her administration, issued on September 14.

On September 20, the court extended that temporary restraining order through October 12, when it granted a preliminary injunction against the state of New York. Hochul’s attorneys appealed to the Second Circuit, which on October 29, 2021, vacated the district court’s decision.

Brejcha went on to note that, “New York is a national outlier: While 47 states and the federal government respect religious objectors, New York punishes them. In fact, after originally announcing that it would respect religious objections, New York then made a U-turn, revoking the religious exemption entirely, while at the same time broadening and retaining its medical exemption.”

“Adding insult to injury,” Brejcha noted, “New York even bars religious objectors who lose their jobs from receiving unemployment compensation, while other workers’ unemployment claims are reviewed on a case-by-case basis.”

As the emergency application to the Supreme Court states: “Vaccine mandates raise difficult questions about balancing indubitably strong public health interests on one side and core constitutional rights on the other. But it is not difficult to see that New York’s unique and punitive treatment of religious objectors violates the First Amendment’s Free Exercise Clause. All Americans, especially our heroic healthcare workers, deserve better.”

Thomas More Society counsel on the case include Senior Counsel Stephen Crampton and Counsel Michael McHale. In addition, the Thomas More Society is working with attorneys from the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, including Mark Rienzi, Daniel Blomberg, Diana Verm Thompson, Adèle Keim, Kayla A. Toney, and James J. Kim. “Hats off to the Becket team for their invaluable assistance in this case of national importance,” said Brejcha.

Read the Thomas More Society’s Emergency Application for Writ of Injunction, or in the alternative, Petition for Writ of Certiorari and Stay Pending Resolution, filed November 12, 2021, with the United States Supreme Court in Dr. A, et al. v. Kathy Hochul, Governor of the State of New York, et al., here.