Today, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to review Liberty Counsel’s petition for writ of certiorari regarding Does 1-2 v. Hochul, a case where three New York health care workers were fired for refusing to take the COVID shot due to their deeply held religious convictions. The High Court voted 6-3 to deny the review, which is not a ruling on the merits. By declining to hear the case, there remains a conflict among the federal circuit courts of appeal regarding whether a state law can supersede Title VII religious protections.

In the petition for writ of certiorari, Liberty Counsel sought to reverse both the district court’s and appeals court’s dismissal of the case, which is based on a New York state law that requires employers to ignore Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The New York law requires hospitals to ignore Title VII’s command for employers to provide reasonable accommodations for religious beliefs. 

In this case, New York’s previously rescinded COVID-19 shot mandate required that state employers force employees to get the injection but unlawfully denied religious exemptions while approving medical exemptions. The Second Circuit Court of Appeals, contrary to other circuits, denied the health care workers’ claims for religious accommodation to the shot finding that the New York defendants had presented a successful “undue hardship” defense, and gave precedence to the New York law over the federal Title VII law. 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. Liberty Counsel argued that federal law is not “subservient” to New York’s law, which has currently infringed on the religious rights of these health care workers. 

Justice Neil Gorsuch, joined by Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito dissented from the denial.

Justice Gorsuch wrote, “The plaintiffs before us include many New York State healthcare workers, but for simplicity’s sake consider just John Doe 2’s story. Doe is a Christian Scientist who worked for New York-Presbyterian Healthcare System, Inc. (NYP), for a decade. Because he understands his faith to require him to abstain from vaccines, he has not received one at any time in his life. For years, NYP respected Doe’s sincere religious beliefs and afforded him an exception to its internal mandatory vaccination policy. 

“Then came COVID–19. When vaccines became available in late 2020 and early 2021, Doe did not line up to receive one. Not only did accepting a vaccine conflict with his sincere religious beliefs generally, it also implicated Doe’s more specific religious belief against benefiting from any abortion because the vaccines approved at that time ‘depended upon abortion-derived fetal cell lines in [their] production or testing.’

“At first, none of this proved a problem. While New York State announced a statewide COVID–19 vaccination mandate for healthcare workers, the mandate included two exemptions—one for healthcare workers with medical reasons for declining vaccination, another for those with sincere religious objections. So Doe’s longstanding vaccination exemption remained intact. But all that changed when state government leadership changed. A new Governor decided to retain the medical exemption to the vaccine mandate. 

“But the Governor did away with the religious exemption, soon declaring that people like Doe ‘[we]ren’t listening to God and what God wants.’

“In light of the new state mandate, NYP insisted that Doe submit to vaccination, and when he declined, it fired him. In doing so, NYP rejected Doe’s proposed accommodation of ‘weekly testing and 100% Mask compliance.’ Those decisions, and similar ones made by the other plaintiffs’ employers, precipitated this lawsuit. Initially, while still employed, the plaintiffs sought a court order preventing their employers from firing them for adhering to their religious beliefs. After they failed to win that relief and lost their jobs, the plaintiffs argued that their terminations violated Title VII.”

Justice Gorsuch then criticized the Second Circuit’s dismissal stating that federal law should not yield to conflicting state mandates especially when federal statutes are intended to preempt state laws.

“I harbor serious doubts about the Second Circuit’s rule,” wrote Justice Gorsuch. “True, Title VII permits an employer to avoid liability for religious discrimination when accommodating an employee would cause it to suffer an ‘undue hardship’ … But I fail to see how a state law (especially an unconstitutional state law) prohibiting an accommodation can always and automatically supply an employer with an ‘undue hardship’ defense under federal law.”

Justice Gorsuch noted that a state law should not be able to control what constitutes an “undue hardship” under a federal antidiscrimination law.

“To hold otherwise would appear to leave States free to strip individuals of the protections guaranteed by so many federal civil rights statutes—Title VII, the ADA, the Fair Housing Act, and the Rehabilitation Act—all by the simple expedient of proscribing accommodations those statutes promise,” reads the dissent. “Rather than federal civil rights laws standing supreme over contrary state law, they would more nearly bow before it.” 

“Put simply, addressing this case is well worth our time— and correcting its error should have been an easy business,” Justice Gorsuch continued. “I can only hope that lower courts will more carefully consider in future cases whether a defendant can successfully mount a Title VII undue hardship defense simply by pointing to a state-law mandate. I hope, too, that one day soon this Court will choose to settle the question so that other Americans seeking to vindicate their civil rights do not suffer the same fate as those now before us.”

In the petition, Liberty Counsel stressed the legal precedent regarding the Supremacy Clause which states that “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. 

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 Founder and Chairman Mat Staver said, “While we are pleased that New York’s unlawful shot mandate has been rescinded, the state still unlawfully forced health care workers to choose between their livelihoods and their religious convictions without any consideration for accommodation. With a conflict still unresolved in the circuit courts, New York’s law against religious accommodations can continue to interfere with Title VII protections in the future. The interplay between Title VII and contrary state law needs to undergo appropriate judicial scrutiny.”