NCLA Amicus Brief Urges Supreme Court to Confront Religious Inequality in Admin…. – Press Release

Washington, D.C., March 18, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — The New Civil Liberties Alliance, a nonpartisan, nonprofit civil rights group, filed an amicus brief today in Dr. A, et al. v. Kathy Hochul, et al., encouraging the U.S. Supreme Court to grant review and hold that New York’s administrative Covid-19 vaccine mandate for healthcare workers denies the free exercise of religion to the Petitioners by allowing secular exemptions while denying religious ones. New York’s policy is inherently unequal, prejudiced, and violative of the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment. Although the discriminatory administrative policy at issue in this case came with blatantly prejudicial attitudes expressed by Governor Hochul, the case provides a vehicle for the Court to address the inherent inequality of all administrative rulemaking for many religious Americans.

On August 18, 2021, the New York Department of Health proposed an emergency Covid-19 vaccination mandate for healthcare workers. The original proposal included mandatory exemptions for those with either religious or medical reasons for not taking the vaccine. In a shocking reversal, three days later, the State’s Public Health and Health Planning Council—an advisory committee headed by the Commissioner of the Department of Health—proposed a revised mandate, this time with no religious exemption.

Governor Hochul explained that a religious exemption is not needed because true believers would get vaccinated. She acknowledged that “we left off [the religious exemption] in our regulations intentionally.” She provided no scientific or legal basis for this intentional omission, explaining instead that there was no “sanctioned religious exemption from any organized religion” and that organized religions are “encouraging the opposite.”

An essential element of republican government is to have policies adopted via laws made by a representative legislature that is elected by, and thus responsive to, the people, including…

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