Supreme Court delivers win to religious vaccine resisters

The Supreme Court on Monday erased a lower court ruling that had upheld New York’s strict school vaccine rules that don’t allow religious exemptions, telling the judges to reexamine the case with an eye toward parental rights.

Amish parents had protested New York’s rules, saying the state used to recognize religious exemptions but ditched them in 2019.

First a federal district court and then the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against the Amish families.

But the Supreme Court told the appeals court Monday to give the case a new look in light of last term’s ruling in a case challenging the lack of parental opt-outs to the LGBTQ diversity curriculum in Montgomery County, Maryland.

The justices vacated the 2nd Circuit opinion, meaning it is no longer in effect.

Kelly Shackelford, president of First Liberty, which represented the families, called the move a victory.

“The Amish community in New York wants to be left alone to live out their faith just like they have for 200 years,” he said. “The Amish take their faith very seriously and are simply asking the State of New York to respect their sincerely held beliefs.”

The justices had ducked another vaccine case just weeks ago, turning aside a case out of California where a mother had asked the high court to recognize her Christianity-based objections to vaccines.

California, like New York, allows for medical exemptions to its school vaccine mandate, but in 2016 canceled the exceptions for religious or personal belief.

The 2nd Circuit, in upholding New York’s new rules, said New York’s new version of its immunization law was neutral on its face and there was no evidence of anti-religious bias in its adoption.

The justices didn’t say in their brief order what, exactly, they found in that ruling that conflicted with last term’s parental rights case.

That decision, Mahmoud v. Taylor, found that the county school system failed by not allowing an opt-out from a curriculum that some parents thought dismissed their religious beliefs about sexuality in favor of pro-LGBTQ messages.

“Public education is a public benefit, and the government cannot ’condition’ its ’availability’ on parents’ willingness to accept a burden on their religious exercise,” Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. wrote for the 6-3 majority in that case, decided in June.