Florida Senators Marco Rubio (R) and Rick Scott (R) signed their names to an amicus brief defending health care workers in a lawsuit against the state of New York over COVID shot mandates. The employees were denied a religious exemption.
The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) also denied injunctive relief to the employees back in December, and the groups defending the employees, The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty and the Thomas More Society, are asking SCOTUS to take up a full hearing.
The amicus brief details how the state of New York imposed a COVID shot mandate on August 18, 2021, containing a religious exemption provision. However, eight days later the state released an updated version of the document, and no religious exemption was present.
“This Court should grant certiorari and reverse the decision below,” the brief said. “New York’s mandate cannot stand. The mandate represents a calculated effort to prevent the religious accommodation process that the Constitution and Congress have long required.”
Among Rubio and Scott are nine other senators who have signed on to the brief. They said that New York’s mandate sets a “dangerous precedent.”
“New York has established a roadmap for undermining religious liberty in the workplace,” the brief said. “If unchecked, it would set a dangerous precedent for future state and local officials who might be tempted to circumvent Congressional protections of faith.”
When SCOTUS initially denied the request for an injunction, Justices Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch, and Samuel Alito dissented forcefully.
“The Free Exercise Clause protects not only the right to hold unpopular religious beliefs inwardly and secretly,” the dissenters wrote. “It protects the right to live out those beliefs publicly in ‘the performance of (or abstention from) physical acts.’”
Gorsuch also blasted New York’s mandate specifically, citing other states.
“Maybe the most telling evidence that New York’s policy isn’t narrowly tailored lies in how unique it is,” Gorsuch wrote. “It seems that nearly every other State has found that it can satisfy its COVID–19 public health goals without coercing religious objectors to accept a vaccine.”
Gorsuch ended his thoughts by citing a decision from 1943.
“Today, we do not just fail the applicants,” Gorsuch wrote. “We fail ourselves. It is among our Nation’s proudest boasts that, ‘[i]f there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in [matters of] religion.’”
New York Governor Kathy Hochul (D) infamously told parishioners at the Christian Cultural Center in Brooklyn in September that she wanted them to be her vaccinated “apostles.”
“Yes, I know you’re vaccinated. They’re the smart ones, but you know, there are people out there who aren’t listening to God and what God wants. You know this. You know who they are,” Hochul said. “I need you to be my apostles. I need you to go out and talk about it and say, ‘We owe this to each other. We love each other.’ Jesus taught us to love one another. And how do you show that love, but to care about each other enough to say, ‘Please get vaccinated because I love you. I want you to live.'”
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Grant Holcomb is a reporter at The Florida Capital Star and The Star News Network. Follow Grant on Twitter and direct message tips.
Photo “Rick Scott” by United States Senate Photographic Studio. Photo “Marco Rubio” by United States Senate. Background Photo “U.S. Capitol” by Martin Falbisoner. CC BY-SA 3.0.
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