The U.S. Supreme Court has slated 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, for a fourth conference on Friday, November 7. The High Court will meet in a private conference to decide whether to accept or decline the case or redistribute it to a later conference again.  

The health care workers petitioned the High Court regarding a New York state law that conflicts with Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and its protections against religious discrimination in the workplace. 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In this case, New York’s previously rescinded COVID-19 shot mandate required that state employers force employees to get the injection but unlawfully denied religious exemptions while approving medical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 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 state law and now SCOTUS has agreed to review this conflict that infringes on the religious rights of health care workers. 

Liberty Counsel is asking SCOTUS to determine which law takes precedence and to ultimately reverse a lower court’s dismissal of the case for an opportunity to take the case to the discovery phase and trial. 

The two questions Liberty Counsel presented 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. 

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, “With a conflict in the courts, the U.S. Supreme Court has the opportunity to take this case and resolve the interplay between Title VII protections and conflicting state law. New York unlawfully forced health care workers to choose between their livelihoods and their religious convictions without any consideration for accommodation. It is time for those responsible for unlawful religious exemption denials and firings to undergo appropriate judicial scrutiny for their actions so the fired health care workers can receive long overdue justice.”