Justices Won’t Block Vaccine Mandate for NY Health Workers; Barrett and Kavanaugh Supply Another Majority to Deny Religious-Liberty Exemption – WHY did we push so hard for these two to be confirmed? I’m having a hard time remembering

Justices won’t block vaccine mandate for NY health workers

The Supreme Court let stand New York State’s edict requiring health care workers to get vaccinated for the coronavirus without offering an exemption from the mandate for religious reasons.

The nation’s highest court on Monday refused an emergency appeal from 20 doctors, nurses and other medical workers who claimed the vaccine mandate forced them to choose between their jobs and religious beliefs.

The vaccine mandate for health care workers in hospitals and nursing homes was initiated by former Gov. Andrew Cuomo and implemented under Gov. Kathy Hochul in August.

Thousands of medical workers have been fired since then for refusing to get vaccinated.

The request for an emergency injunction had been presented to Justice Sonia Sotomayor, a Bronx native who is assigned to handle cases from New York. —>READ MORE HERE

Barrett and Kavanaugh Supply Another Majority to Deny Religious-Liberty Exemption:

This time, the decision upheld New York’s vaccine mandate despite its overt hostility to religion.

For the second time in less than two months, Justices Amy Coney Barrett and Brett Kavanaugh joined with Chief Justice John Roberts and the Supreme Court’s three progressives (Justices Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor, and Elena Kagan) to uphold a state vaccine mandate over a religious-liberty challenge by medical professionals.

This time, it was New York’s vaccine mandate, which initially included an exemption for religious objectors. These objectors included some Catholics and other Christians who oppose abortion. The vaccines are derived in part from abortion — specifically, from fetal-cell lines used in vaccine production and testing. Nevertheless, when Kathy Hochul replaced Andrew Cuomo as governor, she stripped the religious exemption from the mandate, making the astonishing acknowledgment that she had done so “intentionally” because those who resisted vaccination “aren’t listening to God and what God wants.”

The state’s mandate provides an exemption for those who claim to object on medical grounds. Consequently, the mandate blatantly discriminates against religion — and, as Hochul has made clear, quite purposefully so. In addition to depriving religious objectors of their jobs, Hochul’s revised mandate also makes them ineligible for unemployment-insurance benefits.

The six-justice majority nevertheless turned a deaf ear to the religious objectors, who had previously been praised by state-government officials for the heroic medical service they selflessly provided to patients throughout the pandemic, particularly in the early stages. —>READ MORE HERE

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