U.S. Supreme Court justices have rebuffed a challenge to a Connecticut law that revoked religious exemptions to school vaccine requirements.
The nation’s top court declined an appeal to consider overturning a split lower court ruling that found that the law was constitutional.
The justices didn’t comment on the rejection.
The law, enacted in 2021, ended the decades-old religious exemptions to vaccine requirements for schoolchildren and kids in day care. The only exception is for children who had already been granted religious exemptions. Medical exemptions are still available.
Parents sued soon after, alleging the law violated their constitutional rights, including the right to free exercise of religion outlined in the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment.
U.S. District Judge Janet Bond Arterton tossed the lawsuit in 2022, finding that vaccine requirements to attend school, under Supreme Court precedent, don’t violate the free exercise right.
Even if the precedent didn’t foreclose the challenge, the law is constitutional because it’s “rationally related to a legitimate state purpose,” the judge wrote. Laws that implicate the freedom to practice religion can stay in place if officials show they’re rational and forward a state purpose deemed legitimate.
A panel of the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, in a 2–1 ruling in 2023, upheld Judge Arterton’s decision.
“Only one court—state or federal, trial or appellate—has ever found plausible a claim of a constitutional defect in a state’s school vaccination mandate on account of the absence or repeal of a religious exemption,” U.S. Circuit Judge Denny Chin, writing for the majority, wrote at the time. “We decline to disturb this nearly unanimous consensus.”
U.S. Circuit Judge Joseph Bianco said in a partial dissent that plaintiffs had offered a plausible constitutional claim and that Connecticut had failed to explain how most states allow religious exemptions for school children and still maintain “public health and safety.”
In a petition to the Supreme Court to review the ruling, lawyers for the Connecticut parents said that the appeals court’s dismissal of the claims “nullifies the free exercise clause’s protections for hundreds of thousands of schoolchildren.”
The nation’s top court, they said, should offer a standard for evaluating vaccine mandate exemptions “that better protects the diverse religious exercise that the First Amendment protects.”
Connecticut officials said the Supreme Court should not disturb the lower decisions.
In a statement after justices declined to grant the petition, Connecticut Attorney General William Tong said that “this is the end of the road to a challenge to Connecticut’s lifesaving and fully lawful vaccine requirements.”
The Democrat added that the courts have affirmed the state Legislature “acted responsibly and well within its authority to protect the health of Connecticut families and to stop the spread of preventable disease.”
We the Patriots USA, which brought the suit with the Connecticut parents, said they were disappointed that the justices turned down the petition but pointed out that part of the case, whether children with Individualized Education Plans (IEP) are entitled to education, is still being adjudicated.
If a positive ruling is entered, “children with disabilities on IEPs could receive an education and vital support services, regardless of vaccination status,” the group said.
Mr. Tong said he’s confident the remaining claim will ultimately be dismissed too.
A separate case that argues that private religious schools should still be able to offer religious exemptions to vaccine mandates is also still working its way through the courts.
From The Epoch Times
