Supreme Court Won't Block Maine's Vaccine Mandate for Health Care Workers
Source: New York Times
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Friday refused to block Maine’s requirement that health care workers be vaccinated against the coronavirus notwithstanding their religious objections. As is the court’s custom in rulings on emergency applications, its brief order gave no reasons. But the three most conservative members of the court — Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel A. Alito Jr. and Neil M. Gorsuch — issued a lengthy dissent, saying the majority had gone badly astray.
“Where many other states have adopted religious exemptions, Maine has charted a different course,” Justice Gorsuch wrote for the dissenting justice. “There, health care 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.” Maine has required health care workers to be vaccinated against various contagious diseases since 1989, and eliminated exemptions on religious or philosophical grounds under a state law enacted in 2019, before the coronavirus pandemic began.
The state does exempt workers for whom the given vaccine would be “medically inadvisable” in the judgment of a health care professional. The 2019 law was the subject of a referendum, with about 73 percent of the state’s voters approving it. The state included the coronavirus vaccine among the required vaccinations in a regulation issued in August, setting a deadline of Oct. 29. Several health care workers sued, saying the requirement violated their constitutional right to the free exercise of religion.Judge Jon D. Levy of the Federal District Court in Maine ruled against the plaintiffs.
“Both the serious risk of illness and death associated with the spread of the Covid-19 virus and the efforts by state and local governments to reduce that risk have burdened most aspects of modern life,” he wrote. The plaintiffs’ “refusal to be vaccinated based on their religious beliefs has resulted or will result in real hardships as it relates to their jobs,” Judge Levy wrote. “They have not, however, been prevented from staying true to their professed religious beliefs which, they claim, compel them to refuse to be vaccinated against Covid-19.” A unanimous three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit, in Boston, affirmed Judge Levy’s ruling.
Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/29/us/supreme-court-maine-vaccine-mandate.html
Copy of the ruling from SCOTUSBlog (PDF) - https://t.co/h0xz8BVhl4?amp=1
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@SCOTUSblog
BREAKING: By a 6-3 vote, the Supreme Court rejects a challenge to Maine's COVID-19 vaccine mandate for health care workers. The challengers complained that the mandate lacks religious exemptions. Thomas, Alito, & Gorsuch dissent.
https://supremecourt.gov/opinions/21pdf/21a90_6j37.pdf
5:46 PM · Oct 29, 2021
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Or science. 
"religious beliefs," --perhaps against enabling parasitism. ( 
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Given none of the major religions/denominations have expressed a religious objection to the vaccine, it appears all the three of them seem to think is required is to be able to say the word "religion."
Thanks, it is nice to know Court precedent is being repected by 2/3 of the Court, and useful to know that human nature in the form of resistance hasn't changed much either. 