The state’s vaccine mandate unconstitutionally prohibits exemptions for religious reasons, Children’s Health Defense said.
By Catholics for Catholics
A children’s health advocate group is expecting a federal court to strike down a New York State law that revoked religious exemptions from school vaccinations.
According to The Epoch Times, the Children’s Health Defense, a group formerly led by Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., mentioned two recent U.S. Supreme Court rulings in its filing with the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York. The lawsuit was introduced on Dec. 15.
The lawsuit contends that in one of those rulings, the judges ruled in favor of parents in Maryland who strove to keep their children out of classrooms during a time where classes were based on books that promoted lesbian, gay, and similar ways of life.
On that case the court said that parents have the right to guide their children’s religious upbringing and that, when the government violates that right through policies that substantially interfere with children’s religious upbringing, officials must prove that the policy in question advances compelling interests and is “narrowly tailored to achieve those interests.”
The justices in another ruling removed a lower court decision that had sided with New York officials and the state’s repeal of religious exemptions for school vaccine mandates. The justices commanded that the court reconsider the case in light of its Maryland ruling.
The Children’s Health Defense said that New York’s rejection to permit any religious exemptions is not narrowly tailored to protect public health, in part because it does not cover students 18 or older or teachers, attorneys representing Children’s Health Defense say.
“Recent Supreme Court rulings make it clear that New York’s 2019 repeal of religious exemptions must be judged under the highest legal standard: strict scrutiny,” Sujata Gibson, one of the lawyers, told The Epoch Times in an email. “This is a test that New York objectively cannot survive.”
“The arbitrary nature of this law, which allows hundreds of thousands of teachers and students over the age of 18 to attend school without regard to vaccination status while penalizing a small group of religious families, proves this is not about public health. It is about government overreach and a clear hostility toward accommodating religion. Nearly all other states allow religious exemptions without any material difference in public health outcomes,” she added.
A spokesperson for the New York State Department of Health declined to comment.
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