Should states be able to mandate vaccinations without providing any accommodation for those whose religious beliefs prohibit it? That is the question posed by Patrick Hornbeck of Fordham University.
On today's episode of Interactions, we hear from Hornbeck and his article "The Limit Case: Vaccination Mandates without Religious Exemptions."
Amidst all the litigations concerning COVID vaccination mandates, this question represents the limit case. Four states, scattered localities, and numerous private institutions have declined to carve out religious exemptions from vaccination mandates.
Hornbeck notes that our constitutional question arises during a period when the U.S. Supreme Court has given religious convictions an increasingly wide berth. In one line of cases, the Court held that pandemic-era restrictions must treat religious exercise at least as well as comparable secular activities. In a second, the Court limited the reach of a controversial precedent enabling the state to burden religious exercise as an incidental side-effect of neutral, generally applicable laws.
Both lines of cases indicate that a majority of justices are uneasy with, and perhaps willing to overturn, principles of the free exercise jurisprudence they inherited from their predecessors.
Listen now.
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