New York Gov. Kathy Hochul this week urged the Supreme Court to reject a lawsuit over the state’s COVID-19-era vaccination mandate for health care workers.
The New York State Department of Health issued an emergency rule in August 2021 requiring employers in the health care field to mandate COVID-19 vaccinations for their workers.
The department rescinded the mandate in October 2023, while a lawsuit filed by health care workers to challenge it was pending in the courts.
Before the repeal, three health care workers, who were not identified by name in court papers, sued over the rule. They argued it was illegal because it did not allow workers with good-faith religious objections to the vaccine to receive an exemption from the vaccination requirement. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit dismissed their legal complaint in December 2024 in an unpublished nonprecedential summary order….