98 thoughts on “SCOTUS Rejects Religious Exemption From Mandatory Vaccinations: Read It For Yourself”

  1. Good for them. And actually it’s very hard to think of any religion that opposes vaccinations. The one that comes close is the Christian Scientists and even they have said they’re cool with the covid vax.

    What we have is individuals who oppose vaccination with religious like fervor. Now maybe that can grow into a religion or take over a religion.Report

        1. that is definitely not how it’s playing out on the ground wrt jw’s around here. i am involved (peripherally) in some ongoing retargeting/positioning of mitigation plans because of a general adventist antipathy in that direction. (it is not a large #, but it is also not a 0.)

          some of my reaction may very well be due to a stacking of what seems like religious authority (i.e. some guy who can rent a storefront can also be a “pastor” if enough people show up each week), but that also cuts to the heart of the great difficulty/impossibility of judging any “sincerely held” belief.Report

          1. also cuts to the heart of the great difficulty/impossibility of judging any “sincerely held” belief.

            That. That exactly. The virus doesn’t care about belief, we shouldn’t either.Report

            1. i agree with you on that.

              that said, i was horrified to learn last year that meningococcal meningitis vaxes are also opted-out from (varying from state to state, of course*) with regular ease in most states. meningitis kills about 25% of the people who get it, hence the arson of my naivety. it’s more difficult to catch than C19, but still.

              * some states have religious exemptions only, some have “philosophical” objection categories, and a very small handful have neither.Report

              2. it is thankfully difficult to catch (close respiratory/making out contact, generally). but still, i was amazed people would opt out of it – and that orgs would allow them and still attend/enter/etc.

                it seems likely the true lesson here is i should be less easily amazed.Report

    3. Powell filed a lawsuit on behalf of a soldier who didn’t want the COVID vaccine. The legal arguments were spurious and clearly she’s still just phoning it in for fundraising, but there was a quote from the soldier in there that I thought interesting.

      I’m paraphrasing, but it boiled down to “I applied for a religious exemption, and they say it’ll take a week or two to get an answer. However, no one in my unit has gotten one, and I’ve been repeatedly told if I don’t have a religious exemption already on file for the annual flu shot, this one won’t be granted”.

      Which he didn’t, of course.

      That strikes me as a particularly interesting policy, because I’m hard pressed to think of a religious objection to COVID-19 vaccine that wouldn’t apply to the flu shots. The rather strained religious objection is to the use of stem cell lines in development/testing in COVID-19, which were derived from fetal tissue back in the 50s or 60s. They’re not used in making the vaccine, they’re just common cell cultures used for testing.

      Which would also apply to the flu shot, and even more so to HepA and MMR shots.

      I know that it’s difficult to really determine the validity of a religious belief (it’s simply easy to lie about and it’s all internal logic), but for soldiers, at least, who are subject to yearly mandatory vaccines, checking to see if they actually had religious beliefs BEFORE this is probably an excellent way to determine their seriousness.

      Absent any major religious conversions, but again I can’t think of any religion that actually opposes the vaccine. Even the Christian Scientists are behind vaccines.Report

      1. That strikes me as a particularly interesting policy, because I’m hard pressed to think of a religious objection to COVID-19 vaccine that wouldn’t apply to the flu shots.

        I could see, I suppose, an objection to Pfizer/Moderna (but not J&J).Report

        1. Opposite… J&J is manufactured with the stem cell lines. Pfizer/Moderna were just tested with them.

          The Stem Cell issue is the issue and it’s been carefully reviewed on multiple (Catholic) fronts and the Vaccines publicly declared Licit as the cooperation is formal but remote.

          The way to think about it is this: we cannot condone the original act; but as long as that act is not repeated or becomes necessary for additional or new vaccines, then absent other options and in the face of prudential need, the vaccines are licit.

          A very difference scenario would apply if, for example, we constantly needed to harvest new cell lines from aborted babies in order to keep up with the demands of production and/or the needs of research/testing.

          The stable equilibrium of a past act is the only thing in the balance at the moment. Change that, and the Church would change it’s position and defend conscience rights (like nurses/doctors/health care workers on Abortion participation).

          A secondary issue is that the US has an incoherent ‘Protestant’ notion of Religion enshrined in our Constitution… there’s no real way to appeal to “The Church” or anything other than individual conscience. That’s an Us/American problem, not a Church thing… the Church would happily sign a Concordat enumerating the Church’s rights and duties.Report

          1. Oh, my thought was about the whole “individual conscience” route for the “traditional” vaccine (J&J) versus the ONE THAT REWRITES YOUR DNA FROM WHAT GOD GAVE YOU MWUH-HA-HA-HA.

            But, yeah, the stem cell thing.Report

            1. Honestly have not even heard that objection in Catholic Circles… only heard it among fundies.

              Not saying you couldn’t nutpick something somewhere… but the only matter that has been reviewed and commented upon is the substantive issue of the relation to abortion.

              Edit to add: the ‘concern’ about mRNA vaccines is in fact prudential in the sense that they are new and we don’t have a longitudinal study… and, in fairness, we’re all going to look pretty dumb if something happens long-term to us.Report

              4. the ‘concern’ about mRNA vaccines is in fact prudential in the sense that they are new and we don’t have a longitudinal study…

                This application of mRNA vaccines may be novel, but the underlying technology is not new:

                As far back as 1978, scientists had used fatty membrane structures called liposomes to transport mRNA into mouse3 and human4 cells to induce protein expression. The liposomes packaged and protected the mRNA and then fused with cell membranes to deliver the genetic material into cells. These experiments themselves built on years of work with liposomes and with mRNA; both were discovered in the 1960s (see ‘The history of mRNA vaccines’).

                https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02483-wReport

              5. Nor, in fact, is the underlying method new.

                It’s a vaccine. It gives a target to your immune system. JJ and AZ and Pfizer and Moderna all make your body generate the target (JJ and AZ via a modified adenovirus) and Pfizer/Moderna just ignore that and literally tell your cells to do it themselves, skipping an entire middle step.

                Nothing in the vaccine lingers longer in the body longer than two months, nothing in them bioaccumulates, and the mRNA is so fragile that the key issue with mRNA development was keeping the buggers intact.

                Even the side effects all boil down to two issues: Excessive immune response (myocardia for instance) which any vaccine runs a risk of (as does viral infections themselves) and allergies to the underlying, well understood components.

                If vaccines were cars, mRNA are simply electric vehicles. They reduce a lot of complexity and moving parts by removing a gas-powered engine and delivering power directly to the wheels. But it’s still a car, it still handles exactly the same way, and drives on the same old roads.Report

      2. James Joyner, who holds a position at the USMC Command and Staff College had an informative piece at Outside the Beltway on the impending dismissal of 12,000 members of the Air Force. Among the things I found interesting in the information he quoted is that the US Army has issued one religious exemption for the Covid vaccine. The Army has also issued one medical exemption. I wonder what condition the soldier has that precludes these three vaccines at this time?Report

        1. I wonder what condition the soldier has that precludes these three vaccines at this time?

          Something wonky with the immune system. It’s possible to be seriously allergic to vaccine components. It’s also possible to be allergic to multiple things so even if they’re made differently you’re still stuck.

          Alternatively you might not have an immune system so there’s no benefit… although how he’d have that and still be in the army is a question. In theory he might work from home and have rare computer/drone skills.

          https://www.healthline.com/health/vaccinations/immunization-complicationsReport

          1. I figured it was probably allergy. If I’m remembering correctly, anaphylactic allergic reactions to the mRNA vaccines are running in the 2-4 cases per million people range, and essentially all of those people have had previous anaphylactic reactions to some sort of medication. I recall clearly that before Kaiser gave me my two Moderna shots, the nurse asked if I had ever had a serious allergic reaction to any medication.

            I believe that any history of anaphylaxis is a general disqualifier for military recruitment or retention, although as you say, there might be exceptions for particularly rare skills.Report

              3. In the early 90s, the Navy didn’t care about a PCN allergy, since folks don’t normally eat moldy bread, and the other exposure vector would involve medical personnel.

                Maybe a severe peanut allergy would be a problem, since exposure can be incidental.

                But anaphylaxis itself is not a disqualifier.Report

              4. I went into anaphylactic shock once. -10/10, would not recommend.

                Single most terrifying experience of my life. And I had it IN an allergist’s office, around medical personnel that were incredibly experienced in that particular emergency.

                An IV, two or possibly three doses of epi, oral, nasal, and IV antihistamines…..

                30 minutes of sheer hell until stuff subsidized, then another hour of the shakes from the epi shots.Report

              5. I was just waking up from surgery after having my burst appendix removed. They had pumped me full of IV PCN when I started shaking and a rash erupted over my whole body. Last thing I remember was the nurse pulling the bag of PCN and shoving a big syringe into the IV port. I woke up the next day and heard the story from my mom (who noticed what was happening and called the nurse).

                Concur, do not recommend. Also do not recommend being young and stupid, allowing your appendix to burst, and waiting 12 hours to see a doctor.Report

              7. Not long enough for Sepsis, but more than long enough for Peritonitis (the halting of the peristaltic action of the digestive tract – basically all the involuntary muscles that move stuff from the first swallow to the final push are shut down to prevent the spread of the toxins released when the appendix burst). Got to eat through my IV for the next 72 hours while the system rebooted.

                Luckily I was 14, so nigh invincible.Report

  2. I was told by the left that specifically Barrett and Kavanaugh would be mindless partisan theocrats. I argued that it’s actually the right of the Court that calls balls and strikes.Report

    1. Depends which cases you look at. When they allowed the Texas abortion ban to go into effect that seemed to be a bit more partisan. No judge at that level is completely in the tank. They sure allowed hobby lobby to take a giant lump of our religion lets us tell you what for. Also depends on what you think they are biased towards. Business interests want their power to be on top so squashing religious exemptions doesn’t exactly hurt some of what people think right wing judges vote for. And there is actually a lot of law that is hard to get around on this kind of thing.Report

            2. Any law that selects people for different treatment based on what their great-grandparents did is unconstitutional by definition.

              Congress could make this law constitutional by getting rid of the “grandparents” test. For example just everyone go through the hoops we used to have for those whose grandparents did bad things. Or if that’s too much, say something like “if the Justice Department has sued you in court in the last 10 years on this issue you’re on the naughty list”.

              Given how much of the GOP voted for it last time, we could probably do it right now if we weren’t busy trying to spend trillions of dollars.

              IMHO the amazing thing wasn’t that 5 SCOTUS members voted to nix it, it’s that 4 were cool with grandparents’ tests if it could keep their sacred cows alive.Report

              1. It doesn’t matter if you like the result or if they liked the result; what matters is whether the law was unconstitutional. There’s no good argument that it was. States aren’t people. (That the same states we shouldn’t judge because of their histories are the same ones that have passed voter suppression laws the VRA would have forbidden is suggestive.)

                And restoring it wasn’t possible the entire time the GOP controlled the Senate, since McConnell wouldn’t allow it to go forward. It’s part of the John L. Lewis Voting Rights Act, which also can’t go forward because it will be filibustered.Report

              3. what matters is whether the law was unconstitutional. There’s no good argument that it was. States aren’t people.

                You will live under one set of voting rules if your grandfathers did X. For example, if your grandfathers’ couldn’t vote then we’ll make you take a special test.

                Further that’s just a bad filter. If a northern state goes full on toxic, there’s no good reason for it to NOT be on the “bad” list, and if a southern state cleans up its act, there’s no good reason for it to be on the list.

                That the same states we shouldn’t judge because of their histories are the same ones that have passed voter suppression laws the VRA would have forbidden is suggestive.

                “The same”? Alaska, Arizona, Michigan, & South Dakota, are no longer covered, 4 other states would now be covered in totality (California, Florida, New York, and North Carolina).

                But these would be the same “voter suppression laws” that the Supremes thought were affecting so small a percentage of people that they were fine? There is no good argument that the current states are as “racist” as they were 60 years ago. IMHO the super-woke that run California and New York aren’t on the bad list because they’re secretly 1950’s style racists.

                What is going on is both sets of politicians want voting rules that favor themselves even if neither wants to exclude large amounts of the population. There is a strong argument for using the federal gov to shut down that kind of game playing, but it’s a different problem than what we had in the 50’s and so on.

                It’s part of the John L. Lewis Voting Rights Act…

                “Any state that has had 15 or more voting rights violations within the last 25 years?”, sounds like a fine solution. Notice how these rules came up with a different “bad” list?Report

              5. The ban on slavery applies to everyone in the country.

                If we applied that law to only people whose great-great grandparents had owned slaves, then yes, it would be unconstitutional.

                And also heinous. There is no good reason to allow me to own slaves just because my ancestors didn’t.Report

  3. I’m still more disgusted at the blatant power plays the various public sector unions have been making over all this.Report

    1. I want to say that if the mandates get lifted, it’ll be because of the 20-something percent of Sanitation Engineers that won’t be coming into work in NYC. Police? They should be defunded. Firemen? Wasn’t there a series of Subway commercials that focused on firemen right around the time that Jared was still the spokesperson? Kind of problematic, don’t you think? Sanitation Engineers? Who do you think will blink first?Report

        1. Word from the local Fox affiliate is that the staff shortage at FDNY is due to firefighters conducting an informal “sickout” — asserting they are ill and not reporting for their assigned shifts. The union says they have not sanctioned any such action.Report

          1. Well, we’re going to have “who has more credibility?” fights over the next few months, I guess. I’m inclined to say that the average New Yorker has the firefighters above the mayor (and his associates) but that’s just because everybody loves firemen (propaganda like Backdraft still ripples through the culture) and, well, the mayor is merely the mayor.

            Maybe the mayor will successfully tie firemen to Trump.

            (It ain’t the firemen, that will get people to reconsider previous statements and ask for a renegotiation. It’ll be the Sanitation Engineers.)Report

            1. I think you’re misreading how the public sees things like this. Most people aren’t as weird as OTers. They want their public services to function and they want the recovery to continue. They don’t care about the meta. Public employees holding that up are unlikely to be looked upon any more kindly than the teachers who made sure in person classes were suspended for a year.Report

              1. Oh, I’m sure they won’t be looked on kindly, but I don’t know if the inclination will be more towards “let them not be vaxxed if they don’t wanna!” versus “good! Replace them with Californian prisoners who have experience with fighting fires!”

                (And, seriously, it ain’t the firemen who will swing this debate in NYC.)Report

              2. I see the emotional swing going really hard against the people everyone expects to show up who don’t show up. When your house is smoldering the why will be an abstraction.Report

              4. SCOTUS just did: there’s only three votes for a “get out of vax jail free” card as a personal right.

                NYC will get pushed off the front pages on Tuesday, when 12,000 Air Force members will be in violation of a direct order to be fully vaccinated.Report

              5. Oh, I’m not saying that there isn’t *LEGAL* backing for the mandate.

                I’m wondering how late garbage pickup will have to be for people to say “okay, I was 100% in the right to call for mandates. But…”Report

              6. There is a substantial and growing body of evidence that when it is clear that refusing to be vaccinated is a guarantee the worker will be fired “for cause”, refusals run 2-4%. Garbage pickup won’t be that late.Report

              7. For perspective, 2-4% is a lot less than the normal churn (replacement+retirement+death) rate.

                My back of the envelope assumption is the typical job is something like 5 years, so that assumes a churn rate of 20%.Report

              10. MaineHealth will terminate less than 400 of 22,000: 1.8%.

                Houston Methodist terminated, in round numbers, 150 of 25,000 employees: 0.6%.

                InMD mentioned the courts closing doors. More important, I think, is employers closing doors. Dark Matter mentioned turnover. MaineHealth and Houston Methodist are big employers, so among the biggest hirers. They will undoubtedly find an “innocent” reason to not hire the unvaccinated.Report

              12. The interesting question is whether or not turnover increases. A +2% increase should be noticeable and inconvenient for the powers that be.

                If there is no uptick then we’re looking at much sound and fury but little effect.Report

              13. According to the New York Post this morning, the NYPD put a total of 34 uniformed officers and 40 civilian employees on unpaid leave for violating the vax mandate (0.15%). The NYPD also stated that there were “thousands” of exemption applications still under review.Report

              14. Good. The NYPD was bluffing (and, let’s face it, they’re kind of in a “we wish there were fewer of them” situation anyway).

                It’s the Sanitation Engineers that strike me as the main force that will swing the debate. If it’s a few dozen? Feh. They’ll be replaced by Thanksgiving.Report

        1. The case for public sector unions has always been weak. In practice they undermine the public trust. All these stunts accomplish is to make people wonder why we allow them to begin with.Report

          1. I’m gratified to see that liberal online world is dead set opposed to the unions doing this. And personally whatever warm and fuzzies I have for public sector unions vanishes on this issue.Report

          3. Worth noting that teachers, by and and large, aren’t throwing the same fits. I’m sure individuals are, but there’s no stories of strikes, sick-outs, or even much public whining. Instead they’re just sighing and drinking more heavily as angry parents scream about CRT and threaten them for telling Johnny to pull his mask up.

            It’s only firefighters and cops, the two unions the GOP approves of, that are throwing a public tantrum.Report

            1. IMHO, it’s because teacher unions really took it on the chin last year because of the temper tantrums (& sure, having conservative firebrands roast them made it worse).

              The problem with the PD & FD unions is that if liberal firebrands roast them, they undermine support for public sector unions at the same time.Report

            2. Heh, Teacher’s Unions ate (and are eating) their stored social capital in other ways. I don’t think they consumed *all* of it yet, but they consumed a lot…Report

              1. I suspect you’re conflating “teachers” with “school boards”.

                I know our district has been prevented from implementing many common sense changes due to the school board basically burying their heads in the sand and praising Abbot.

                The elected school board. Which really controls far, far more than teachers do. But aren’t teachers a handy target for those elected officials to blame.

                Even here in Texas there’s been the Governor trying to force schools not to require masks. Heck, in Florida it’s even worse.Report

        2. When liberals complain about the decline of unions in the US, it’s crap like this drives the decline.

          Ah how quickly we forget St. Ronnie slaying the Air Traffic Controllers Union dragon; or Amazon engaging in illegal tactics to prevent a union election.Report

          1. Sure, and the general public says, “meh” because unions have shot themselves in the foot so many times that people don’t see them as an unalloyed good anymore.Report

  4. The fact that people with very good paying jobs with secure benefits are even threatening to quit rather then take a remarkably ordinary vaccine is a sobering reminder of the power of political propaganda and tribal instincts.

    I mean, how many of these people were anti-vaxxers even two or three years ago? Back then, anti-vax was a fringe position on the periphery of both parties. In a lot of these cases like military folk, they have already accepted half a dozen different vaccinations as a condition of enlistment, all without a peep or protest.

    But now it has become the norm among Republicans, something that all the leading officials warmly court and don’t dare offend.
    What changed? How did anti-vax grow from a tiny blip on the radar to something that is so hotly debatable, that candidates tiptoe around it with fear?

    Propaganda, essentially. The 24/7 firehose of anti-vax quackery from Fox and OAN and the various Youtube and Facebook outlets. Contact trace back every one of these anti-vax nuts who has “done their own research” and you will find the same handful of megaphones spewing propaganda.Report

    1. I think we have some level, maybe even this level, of “it’s new” paranoia every time we have a new vaccine roll out. Covid is somewhat unusual in that it’s transmission rate is higher than normal so we need more people vaccinated.

      Now the big thing which has changed is the people pushing back can organize and/or get social support from each other because of facebook. A member of my family was deeply reluctant, we brought social pressure against them until they folded. If they were more into facebook they’d have supporters telling them that they were right, their own personal echo chamber.Report

      1. When the polio vaccine was rolled out there was a fringe who resisted it with all the same quackery as today.

        What DIDN’T happen is an entire political party and massive global media empire amplify it. This is new.Report

        1. Absent Trump, imho the political parties largely are fine.

          Now the media empire, i.e. Facebook and the other fringe amplifiers? That we’re still working out how to handle.

          I think Facebook (and the entire “everyone can publish”) is behind a number of ills, school shootings, maybe rise of the white supremacy movement (assuming they are on the rise and not just something the Left wants to fight), mass gaining up on civilians, etc.Report

        1. Agreed. Though it seems like it’s gone from a pretty fringe idea to an important component of (a significant subsection of) conservative identity. I don’t believe it has much to do with principle or policy.Report

  5. Airplane pilots? Not so much.

    There is a long line of 2nd and 3rd level pilots trying to become 1st because the level of pay is so drastically different. Combine that with less flying and I’m sure we can replace 2% of our top level pilots without too much issue.Report

  6. Hold up, hold up, hold up…

    There are a bunch of labor strikes going on in the country right now. Strikes over wages, benefits, and quality of life.

    In the coming weeks, I imagine that there will be attempts to smoosh these strikes together with the anti-vax thing.

    I know that if *I* were in upper management, I’d want to smoosh them together.Report

    1. There probably will be. Sadly the media will likely play along, since the unorganized general strike that led to 4 million people quitting jobs voluntarily last quarter is STILL being called a labor shortage in the media. I’m not sure how you could pull the apparently about to be settled JD strike – or the Nabisco or Kellogg’s ones into that realm though since they are all ready well established and well covered.Report

  7. I don’t know whether to categorize this as a “blink” or as a “wait a second, let me blow my nose and then we can continue”.

    Report

    1. OMB met with dozens of unions and business groups over the last couple of weeks. Reportedly, all asked that the mandates be delayed until after the holidays to avoid further complicating the usual November/December staffing problems. In light of that, less blink and more “You’re right, let’s avoid that complication.”Report

        1. My impression is that the vast majority of upper management at American big businesses is in favor of a vaccinated workforce. What they have been afraid of is the polls that say 30% of workers will quit their jobs over a mandate, and seeing that happen to them but not their competitors if they act on their own. Between the recent much lower actual numbers of people quitting, and the cover that their competitors will also have a mandate, they’re fine. But trying to juggle holiday staffing and logistics is always a challenge, so waiting makes some sense.

          (Although given that Colorado has quietly seen its case and hospitalization numbers go so high that we are starting to restrict hospital care, I would prefer that we had forced people to get their vaccinations a month ago. There haven’t been any regular ICU beds available locally for weeks, and now it’s statewide. My wife and I got our third Moderna dose yesterday, but that doesn’t provide any protection against getting t-boned by a drunk driver.)Report

          1. I’m pretty such that I’d agree with your take on upper. There might be a handful of VPs here or there who don’t want a shot themselves but would want to have the workforce vaccinated.

            As for the workforce, I think that the general sentiment is that the vaccine mandate is fine as a sentiment but, like, it should be a *NICE* mandate and not a “lose your job” mandate. Make exceptions for the so-called “natural immunity” and allow testing instead of the shot and so on and so forth.

            “So not a mandate mandate?”
            “Just a mandate. Not a mandate mandate.”Report

            1. Erstwhile brother Gabriel Malor has an observation:

              Report

    2. Using private industry as an arm of gov policy when that policy comes down to “executive order”? I could see the Supremes saying you can’t do this.Report

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