US Supreme Court Declines Rehearing on NY Vaccine Mandate Case

The Supreme Court on Friday morning once again declined to weigh in on a case brought by New York healthcare workers who were denied a religious accommodation from the state’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate for healthcare workers and lost their jobs when they were not vaccinated. The denial of rehearing in Does 1-2 v. Hochul came as part of the third and final regularly scheduled list of summer orders.Summer order lists normally serve as a chance for the justices to clear out some of the pending requests for action – particularly petitions for rehearing – that build up between the end of June or early July, when they hold their final conference before their summer recess, and late September, when they return and hold the so-called “long conference.” Although the court ordinarily does not add new cases to its merits docket on its summer order lists (as opposed to after the “long conference”), it sometimes opts to do so, as it did on July 20, when it granted review in Jouppi v. Alaska.In Does 1-2 v. Hochul, the court denied the healthcare workers’ original petition for review on June 29, over a dissent by Justice Neil Gorsuch that Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito joined. Gorsuch contended that the healthcare workers’ case “raises an important and recurring question of federal law that warrants this Court’s attention.” “I fail to see,” Gorsuch emphasized, “how a state law (especially an unconstitutional state law) prohibiting an accommodation can always and automatically supp