beckernews.com by Kyle Becker
A federal judge has issued a preliminary injunction against the State of New York’s enforcement of a vaccine mandate that threatens the mass firings of thousands of health workers and public servants.
The court ruling was announced by the Thomas More Society, which is defending a group of 17 health care workers who object to New York State’s vaccine mandate on religious grounds. Judge David Hurd granted their request for an injunction, which stops the state from enforcing the policy, on equal protection and First Amendment grounds.
“Since its ratification in 1791, the First Amendment has protected religious practitioners from government action that ‘discriminates against some or all religious beliefs or regulates or prohibits conduct because it is undertaken for religious reasons,” the judge’s ruling states. “And since Congress amended the statute in 1972, Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 has explicitly required most employers to reasonably accommodate an employee’s religious beliefs absent evidence that doing so would pose an undue hardship.”
