religious exemption vaccination letter for work

#Religious exemption vaccination letter for work free#

Reflecting on the recent decision in Slate, Dalia Lithwick and Mark Joseph Stern write, “What are state and local officials attempting to fight the deadliest pandemic in a century supposed to do with this sprawling mess? Can they craft any public health restriction on religious services that will hold up to this court’s scrutiny?” What do you think? Can they? They seem to be applying a rule that’s stricter than usual - in a pandemic. It’s not as though we’re saying, well, the justices are applying the rule as strictly as usual.

But the Court isn’t really being clear, either, that we’re seeing discrimination against religious entities. Now, if you see discrimination or animus behind the regulation of religion, then you can scrutinize it at the level of strict scrutiny. And that looks like what we had in Santa Clara.

#Religious exemption vaccination letter for work free#

One issue in the free exercise area is, it seems we don’t know what the constitutional standard is anymore.īecause the Supreme Court doesn’t seem to be using what we thought was the doctrinal rule, which says if you have a neutral rule of general applicability, you can’t challenge that on free exercise grounds. Others say that there should be a lowering of scrutiny of government measures when we have a pandemic, whether it’s smallpox in Jacobson, or the coronavirus now. They seem to be applying a rule that’s stricter than usual - in a pandemic.Īnd so some people say, look, you shouldn’t dilute the Constitution during emergencies, but courts should recognize their role and recognize the compelling interests that the state has. It’s over 100 years old, it predates all of our modern rights jurisprudence. So there’s a bit of a split between public health scholars as to what significance Jacobson should hold.

Massachusetts, the Supreme Court decision that upheld states’ authority to enforce vaccine mandates, and its absence in these recent decisions, and what that means? And so that allowed things like taking communion in church, going to confession, getting spiritual counseling - indoors, in churches - just as it allowed one-off indoor visits to, say, a therapist.Īnd so the reason it’s concerning is it suggests that you can’t regulate religious entities as you do others, even when the reason for your regulation is a seriously contagious, deadly public health disaster.Īnd if we’re thinking about other areas of public health, if you can’t regulate, and we’re going to second-guess public health authorities where a pandemic is involved, it seems likely that the Supreme Court will go even further, if we’re talking about something less than a pandemic.Ĭould talk a bit about Jacobson v.

And they can come indoors for non-gathering activities. Instead, it said, everyone, for any reason, can’t gather indoors, but they can gather out-of-doors. It suggests that you can’t regulate religious entities as you do others, even when the reason for your regulation is a seriously contagious, deadly public health disaster.

So there wasn’t the kind of religion-specific regulation that we had seen in other cases, where they would say, you can have religious services at 25% capacity, or you can have religious services, but you can’t sing. So Santa Clara, where the case came from, had a ban on all indoor gatherings, and allowed outdoor gatherings, and also non-gatherings indoors. Newsom, you tweeted that it spelled trouble for public health. In response to the Supreme Court’s shadow docket decision in Gateway City Church v. To better understand what these rulings might mean for public health, free exercise of religion, the future of the COVID-19 pandemic, and potential vaccine mandates, I spoke with Professor Elizabeth Sepper, an expert in religious liberty, health law, and equality at the University of Texas at Austin School of Law. This religious exceptionalism is emerging as a key trend in recent Supreme Court decisions, particularly those related to COVID-19 restrictions. Newsom, blocked a county-level ban on church services, despite the fact that the ban applied across the board to all indoor gatherings. The Court’s ruling in the case, Gateway City Church v. On February 26 th, the Supreme Court of the United States issued a shadow docket decision that could foretell sweeping limitations for public health measures, both within and outside the COVID-19 pandemic context.