Federal courts in NY weigh in on religious exemptions for COVID-19 vaccine mandates

Thanks to directives from President Joe Biden, former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, current Governor Katherine Hochul, and New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, COVID-19 vaccine mandates are becoming the norm in the public sector and more common among large private-sector employers. Whether a vaccination policy will be enforceable may turn on whether it accounts for those with qualifying disabili-ties and sincerely held religious objections.

In September and October, two federal district court judges in New York issued contrary decisions in-volving religious exemptions to New York’s vaccine mandate for healthcare workers. In one case, the court granted injunctive relief to the healthcare workers, while in the other, the court denied the same relief to another group of healthcare workers. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, whose decisions control in New York, then issued an order and opinion that seemed to discount the importance of an express religious exemption in the policy.

In other cases of interest, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to block the implementation of Maine’s vaccination mandate, which lacked a religious exemption, and two district courts in New York refused to grant injunctive relief to New York City teachers and business owners who claimed the city’s policies infringed on the religious beliefs of affected individuals. Read on to understand what this flurry of decisions on religious exemptions means for your company’s own policy.

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