When Are Exemptions to COVID Vaccine Mandates Required?

On Friday October 29, the Supreme Court refused to grant an emergency request by a group of Maine health-care workers challenging Democratic governor Janet Mills's August 2021 "emergency rule" mandating health-care workers in public and private institutions receive COVID-19 vaccines or be fired. The medical professionals in the case, titled John Does 1–3 v. Mills, have sincerely held religious objections to taking the COVID-19 vaccines because of their known link to aborted fetal cells in the vaccines' testing or development. Maine's vaccine mandate permits medical exemptions but, conspicuously, does not recognize religious exemptions. Maine's flat denial of religious accommodations for employees is not only unusual, it is unlawful.