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Catholic Mother's Vaccine Exemption Request Denied by U.S. Supreme Court
Confirmed
In Short: The U.S. Supreme Court has denied an emergency request for a religious vaccine exemption for a 5-year-old boy in New York.
The U.S. Supreme Court has denied an emergency request that would have allowed a Catholic mother in New York to send her 5-year-old son to kindergarten without the vaccinations required by state law.
The mother, identified in court papers as Jane Doe, wanted her son, C.F., to start at Waverly School in Eastchester this month and is seeking a religious exemption to required vaccines.
A federal judge in New York and then a three-judge U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit panel turned her down.
State officials have said a religious carve-out would undercut efforts to keep disease from spreading among children, pointing to an earlier appeals court ruling that left the vaccine law in place.
The application was then presented to Justice Sonia Sotomayor, the circuit justice for the 2nd Circuit, who referred it to the full Supreme Court, which denied it.
New York law has a provision that children unvaccinated for medical reasons must stay at home during outbreaks, and Doe agreed to abide by that if granted an exemption.
In court filings, Jane Doe identified herself as 'a lifelong practicing Roman Catholic' and argued her religious beliefs prevent her from undergoing vaccination herself or allowing her son to be vaccinated.
According to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, a person must not be forced to act against a conscience formed well through Scripture, reason, and Church teaching, even when others would make a different choice.
What's still developing
- She also expressed serious reservations about other aspects of vaccine development: “Defiling the blood by mixing it with the blood of animals, with the remains of aborted human beings, or with foreign biological material, violates God’s Word,” she said, according to her statement of religious beliefs filed in the case.
- However, in the 2008 instruction Dignitas Personae, the Church said that Catholics utilizing vaccines have “a duty” to let drugmakers and their healthcare providers know they oppose the way the vaccines were developed and demand vaccines created without the use of aborted fetal cells.
- New York dropped religious exemptions from school vaccine rules in 2019 after a measles outbreak, however, though medical exemptions remain.
- Two other courts had already denied her request for a temporary injunction.
- Four states — California, Connecticut, Maine, and New York — only allow medical exemptions, according to KFF.
- In August, the Catholic bishops of Florida issued a staunch defense of their ability to determine policies for Catholic schools after Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier sent them a letter demanding that Catholic schools in the Sunshine State adopt religious exemptions to vaccine requirements or risk their ability to participate in the state’s school voucher program.
- All states require children to be vaccinated against certain diseases in order to attend public schools, although policies for religious or medical exemptions vary.
- Some vaccines involve growing viruses in cell lines believed to be derived originally from unborn children aborted in the mid-20th century, such as the HEK-293 fetal cell line.