The United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit issued a ruling that the University of Colorado Anschutz School Medicine’s refusal to allow religious exemptions to its COVID-19 vaccine mandate was “motivated by religious animus” and unconstitutional under the First Amendment’s Religious Clauses.
The Court ruled that the University’s vaccine mandates granted “exemptions for some religions, but not others, because of differences in their religious doctrines” and granted “secular exemptions on more favorable terms than religious exemptions.” Both of these things were illegal.
The Court reaffirmed the First Amendment principle that government cannot test the sincerity of employees’ religious beliefs.
The University’s mandates violated “clearly established” constitutional rights, the court held.
The 55-page ruling, issued on 7 May, was a reversal of a previous lower-court decision.
The appeal was filed in March 2022 by the Thomas More Society on behalf of 17 faculty and students who claimed that the university refused to respect their religious objections to taking the vaccine.
Hellbound and Down 