2nd Circuit Rejects Religious Liberty Challenge to School Vaccination Policy

Written by Don Byrd

Plaintiffs in Phillips v. City of New York include a set of parents whose child is exempt on religious grounds from the mandatory vaccination required to attend public school. While New York State law allows for the religious exemption, the parents challenged a policy that required their son to stay home from school during a chicken pox outbreak. The 2nd Circuit yesterday rejected that argument (along with other challenges to the vaccination law).

In its decision, the court emphasized that the Supreme Court has previously ruled mandatory vaccination laws are constitutional. The First Amendment, furthermore, does not require the state to provide a religious exemption from the law. Just because New York has chosen to provide the religious exemption, the ruling argues, does not bar the state from enforcing the rule against such students in a more limited way.

From the opinion:

New York could constitutionally require that all children be vaccinated in order to attend public school. New York law goes beyond what the Constitution requires by allowing an exemption for parents with genuine and sincere religious beliefs. Because the State could bar Phillips’s and Mendoza‐Vaca’s children from school altogether, a fortiori, the State’s more limited exclusion during an outbreak of a vaccine‐preventable disease is clearly constitutional.

You can read the ruling here.