Two Supreme Court Justices appointed by President Trump, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett, provided the “swing votes” in Friday’s 6-3 ruling to deny Maine Health Care Workers religious exemptions to COVID-19 vaccines as a condition for employment.
Trump’s Supreme Court Denies Religious Exemptions to Mandatory COVID-19 Shots to Maine Health Care Workers
by Brian Shilhavy
Editor, Health Impact News
For the first time this week, all 9 justices of the Supreme Court of the United States participated in an emergency hearing to stop COVID-19 vaccine mandates.
The case was a “religious exemption” case for Maine healthcare workers who were given until Friday, October 29, 2021 to comply with a COVID-19 vaccine mandate as a condition for employment.
The Right-wing Christian group, Liberty Counsel, represented about 2000 healthcare workers in Maine who claimed they were denied filing religious exemptions to the mandate, while medical exemptions were allowed.
Fetal tissue cells are used in the production of COVID-19 vaccines, and earlier this month Project Veritas published a video from a Pfizer employee whistleblower who claims that internal communication at Pfizer tried to hide this fact from the public, in an effort to reduce or eliminate religious exemption claims. See:
Pfizer Whistleblower Claims Pfizer Hid Information from the Public About Using Fetal Tissue to Develop their COVID-19 Vaccine
The Supreme Court rejected the Maine healthcare workers claim in a 6-3 decision, with Trump-appointed Supreme Court Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett providing the “swing votes,” joining Justice Stephen Breyer in denying the petition.
As a result, now thousands of healthcare workers in Maine face losing their jobs, and probably many more thousands, if not millions, nationwide.
The three dissenting justices were Neil Gorsuch, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito. Gorsuch (also a Trump appointee) wrote the dissenting opinion and stated:
Maine has adopted a new regulation requiring certain healthcare workers to receive COVID–19 vaccines if they wish to keep their jobs. Unlike comparable rules in most other States, Maine’s rule contains no exemption for those whose sincerely held religious beliefs preclude them from accepting the vaccination.
The applicants before us are a physician who operates a medical practice and eight other healthcare workers. No one questions that these individuals have served patients on the front line of the COVID– 19 pandemic with bravery and grace for 18 months now. App. to Application for Injunctive Relief, Exh. 6, ¶8 (Complaint).
Yet, with Maine’s new rule coming into effect, one of the applicants has already lost her job for refusing to betray her faith; another risks the imminent loss of his medical practice. The applicants ask us to enjoin further enforcement of Maine’s new rule as to them, at least until we can decide whether to accept their petition for certiorari. I would grant that relief.
Gorsuch also addressed the hypocrisy in allowing medical exemptions, but not religious exemptions:
No one questions that protecting patients and health care workers from contracting COVID–19 is a laudable objective. But Maine does not suggest a worker who is unvaccinated for medical reasons is less likely to spread or contract the virus than someone who is unvaccinated for religious reasons.
Nor may any government blithely assume those claiming a medical exemption will be more willing to wear protective gear, submit to testing, or take other precautions than someone seeking a religious exemption.
He could have easily added that the vaccinated are at least as likely to spread COVID-19, if not more likely, based on available data.
He also addressed the hypocrisy of the State’s assertion that denying religious exemptions would “protect the State’s healthcare infrastructure.”
That leaves Maine’s third asserted interest: protecting the State’s healthcare infrastructure. According to Maine, “[a]n outbreak among healthcare workers requiring them to quarantine, or to be absent . . . as a result of illness caused by COVID–19, could cripple the facility’s ability to Cite as: 595 U. S. ____ (2021) 5 provide care.” Shah Decl. 44, ¶56.
But as we have already seen, Maine does not dispute that unvaccinated religious objectors and unvaccinated medical objectors are equally at risk for contracting COVID–19 or spreading it to their colleagues. Nor is it any answer to say that, if the State required vaccination for medical objectors, they might suffer side effects resulting in fewer medical staff available to treat patients.
If the State refuses religious exemptions, religious workers will be fired for refusing to violate their faith, which will also mean fewer healthcare workers available to care for patients. (Full opinion here.)
This is now the fourth time the Supreme Court has refused to block a COVID-19 vaccine mandate via an emergency order, but it is the first one where all 9 justices were involved, and we can clearly see what the result was.
The facts and reasoning for this case, as written by Justice Gorsuch, are so simple and so basic, that the only explanation that can explain this denial of religious exemptions is that Corporate America, and not the judiciary, nor the presidency, nor Congress, are running the country now and calling the shots.
This has, of course, been going on for a very long time now, but this is so blatant and so arrogant, that it takes corruption in the United States to a whole new level.
The response to COVID-19, started by President Donald Trump and his Operation Warp Speed, has transferred $TRILLIONS to Big Pharma and Corporate America. They have never been so invested in something in the past that comes even close to comparing to the scale of the COVID-19 response and transfer of wealth they have received.
This IS the New World Order that we are watching unfold right before our eyes, and if you still think this is a “conspiracy theory” then you need to wake up, and wake up fast.
These world leaders that comprise this “Global Public-Private Partnership” that Iain Davis so eloquently exposed earlier this week, have made their intentions very clear, and they are so bold now that they could care less if a growing percentage of the public is waking up and is on to them now.
They truly believe that nothing can stop them now, and if the public does not arise in mass and start refusing their orders, they will be correct.
They control all aspects of U.S. Government now, including the CDC, FDA, NIH, and other federal agencies that determine health policies, and for those who do not follow their orders, they just get them into the courts and ultimately they will end up at the Supreme Court, which they obviously have firm control over.