Three years after COVID-19 vaccines became widely available to adults – at which point the CDC already knew they couldn’t stop transmission – courts are finally starting to put their foot down on the most basic legal question: Are mandates at least applied fairly, if not scientifically?
The 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals not only knocked down the University of Colorado medical school’s original and revised 2021 mandates for discriminating against employees seeking religious exemptions, but knocked the trial judge for “abuse of discretion” by reversing the burden of proof to moot the case.
The Anschutz campus, whose dental school recently created a diversity, equity and inclusion award, made an early pivotal decision on COVID vaccine mandates by scrutinizing the content as well as sincerity of beliefs among employees and students seeking exemptions.
“The Administration’s September 1 Policy is not neutral on its face; the September 24 Policy is not neutral in practice; and both substantially burden” the religious exercise of the anonymous 11 female and six male plaintiffs, according to the majority opinion by Judge Allison Eid, who replaced Neil Gorsuch when President Trump appointed him to the Supreme Court.
“It is manifestly unreasonable to think” the Sept. 24 policy “would reach precisely the same results … by accident,” Eid wrote. “The Administration had spent weeks or months drafting and implementing a policy hostile toward and discriminatory against certain religions, only to adopt a new, purportedly neutral policy that reached precisely the same results.”
University of California San Francisco epidemiologist Vinay Prasad celebrated the ruling for recognizing CU Anschutz administrators “set an indefensible policy,” while the plaintiffs’ lawyers at the Thomas More Society thanked the court for recognizing the university’s “value judgments … reeked of religious bigotry” and violated constitutional rights and “basic decency.”
The ruling is reminiscent of the Supreme Court’s narrow finding against the Colorado Civil Rights Commission for “official expressions of hostility to religion” when it punished Masterpiece Cakeshop owner Jack Phillips for declining to make custom wedding cakes for gay couples based on his Christian view of marriage.
In the private sector, a high-profile vaccine mandate lawsuit by an actor fired from the Fox show “911” is heading to trial over whether Disney-owned 20th Television trampled Rockmond Dunbar’s views as a follower of the Church of Universal Wisdom, which The New York Times profiled in 2003 for its utility in circumventing childhood vaccination mandates.
“It appears that Disney vetted exemption applications on a case-by-case basis, investigating whether the religions constituted true religious institutions and whether applicants actually followed the beliefs,” according to The Hollywood Reporter.
Hellbound and Down 