Liberty Counsel filed a petition for writ of certiorari asking the U.S. Supreme Court to review Does 1-3 v. Hochul on behalf of three New York health care workers who were fired for refusing to take the COVID shot due to their deeply held religious convictions. 

The Second Circuit Court of Appeals had denied the health care workers’ discrimination claims under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and dismissed their case on the grounds that a newly passed state law required New York hospitals to ignore Title VII’s command for employers to provide reasonable accommodations for religious beliefs. This decision conflicts with other appeals court rulings upholding similar Title VII claims. This means there is a circuit court split on the issue that SCOTUS should resolve immediately to protect the religious rights of health care workers.

Liberty Counsel seeks a reversal of a lower court’s dismissal and the opportunity for the case to proceed to a discovery phase and trial.

In this case, New York’s COVID-19 shot mandate required that state employers force employees to get the injection but unlawfully denied religious exemptions while approving nonreligious medical exemptions. While Title VII prohibits this discrimination, the Second Circuit held that employers did not violate Title VII because granting a religious exemption would have violated the state’s mandate for every employee to get the shot. This directly conflicts with other decisions from the Second, Fourth, Sixth, Seventh, Ninth, Tenth, and Eleventh Circuit Courts of Appeal, which ruled that state laws must yield to federal laws regarding discrimination requirements.

The two questions Liberty Counsel presents in the petition to the High Court are: 

1. Whether compliance with state laws directly contrary to Title VII’s requirement to provide a reasonable accommodation may serve as an undue hardship justifying an employer’s noncompliance with Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. 

2. Whether a state law that requires employers to deny without any consideration all requests by employees for a religious accommodation, contrary to Title VII’s religious nondiscrimination provision, is preempted by Title VII and the Supremacy Clause. 

In the petition, Liberty Counsel stresses the legal precedent regarding the Supremacy Clause where “federal law is supreme over any contrary state law.” For the Second Circuit to rely on New York’s state law prohibiting religious accommodations in this case to excuse noncompliance with federal Title VII law that requires religious accommodation “is simply unacceptable under the Supremacy Clause,” wrote Liberty Counsel.

The Second Circuit’s decision cannot be reconciled with other decisions from its own bench nor with decisions from at least seven other circuit courts. This reflects an ever-increasing problem among the lower courts where some are upholding Title VII over a contrary state law while others are permitting noncompliance favoring state laws that are at odds with Title VII. 

In fact, a state law at odds with Title VII is no law at all, and it must yield to the demands of federal anti-discrimination law, noted Liberty Counsel. 

Liberty Counsel represents the three health care workers against Trinity Health, Inc., New York Presbyterian Healthcare System, Inc., and Westchester Medical Center Advanced Physician Services, P.C.

Liberty Counsel Founder and Chairman Mat Staver said, “The State of New York forced health care workers to choose between their livelihoods and their religious convictions without any consideration for accommodation. With a conflict in the courts, we are asking the U.S. Supreme Court to resolve the lower court split on Title VII protections. Therefore, those responsible for unlawful religious exemption denials and firings can undergo appropriate judicial scrutiny for their actions and the fired health care workers can receive long overdue justice.”