Dr. A v. Hochul

Healthcare heroes on the frontlines

In March 2020, Americans gained new appreciation and admiration for doctors, nurses, and other healthcare workers who heroically put their own health and safety on the line day in and day out to help and heal their neighbors.

But now that the worst moments of the COVID-19 pandemic are behind us, doctors, nurses, and other healthcare workers in New York are being punished for abstaining from vaccination on religious grounds. In accordance with a state mandate, healthcare institutions across New York have been forced to fire healthcare workers who refused the COVID-19 vaccine—even when they wanted to keep them on the job, and even when firing them has forced them to close emergency rooms and reduce services.

Lose your job or violate your conscience

On August 18, 2021, then-Governor Andrew Cuomo signed into law a vaccine mandate for the state’s heroic healthcare workers that allowed for religious exemptions along the lines of medical exemptions. But on August 26, 2021, Governor Kathy Hochul suddenly changed course and removed the religious exemption while maintaining the medical exemption.

The mandate went as far as to demand healthcare workers either get vaccinated or lose their jobs. And if they decided to follow their conscience, they would also lose their unemployment benefits as well.

As New York faces a severe shortage of medical professionals, Governor Hochul has made it clear that it was no mistake to omit a religious exemption from the state’s mandate. At the Christian Cultural Center in Brooklyn, Hochul mocked religious Americans with objections to the vaccine, saying “you know there’s people out there who aren’t listening to God and what God wants. You know who they are.”

Seeking emergency relief

Shortly after the governor issued the mandate, Thomas More Society filed a lawsuit against Governor Hochul on behalf of 17 healthcare workers who have religious objections to the COVID-19 vaccine but are willing to undergo frequent testing and use protective clothing at all times onsite. Several of the healthcare workers have natural immunity from already contracting COVID due to their heroic work on the front lines of the pandemic.

In November of 2021, Becket joined Thomas More Society in filing an emergency application to the Supreme Court to end New York’s harmful vaccine mandate. Three Justices would have granted the application, which was ultimately denied. In February 2022, Becket and Thomas More asked the Supreme Court to hear the full case on the merits.

Becket’s and Thomas More’s brief points out that 47 other states, as well as the federal government, protect religious objectors by either not mandating vaccines or by allowing religious exemptions for those with objections to the COVID-19 vaccines.