MANHTTAN (CN) — A divided Second Circuit panel on Friday upheld the constitutionality of a Connecticut law that ended the state's longstanding offering of religious exemptions from immunization requirements for children in schools, colleges and day care.
In a 2-1 decision, the panel found that repealing religious exemptions for students’ mandatory immunizations, while still allowing medical exemptions to remain in place, was a reasonable means to promote health and safety by reducing the potential spread of vaccine-preventable diseases.
Writing for the majority, U.S. Circuit Judge Denny Chin said the April 2021 law signed by Governor Ned Lamont contained "no trace" of hostility toward religious believers, and did not violate objectors' constitutional rights to due process and the free exercise of religion.
"Although plaintiffs contend in their supplemental brief that they find 'implicit hostility' in the legislative debate, they have not pointed to any specific expressions of animus," the Obama appointee wrote.
"Not only does the absence of a religious exemption decrease the risk that unvaccinated students will acquire a vaccine-preventable disease by lowering the number of unvaccinated peers they will encounter at school, but the medical exemption also allows the small proportion of students who cannot be vaccinated for medical reasons to avoid the harms that taking a particular vaccine would inflict on them," Chin wrote later.
Chin was joined in the majority by Senior U.S. Circuit Judge Pierre Leval, who was appointed by President Bill Clinton.
Connecticut’s law had been challenged by the groups We the Patriots USA and the CT Freedom Alliance, and a group of Connecticut parents, who claimed the state’s repeal violated their First Amendment rights by removing the religious exemption from school vaccination requirements.
Connecticut Attorney General Tong applauded the circuit court’s ruling in favor of the state law.
“This decision is a full and resounding affirmation of the constitutionality and legality of Connecticut’s vaccine requirements,” he wrote in a statement Friday. “Vaccines save lives — this is a fact beyond dispute. The Legislature acted responsibly and well within its authority to protect the health of Connecticut families and stop the spread of preventable disease.”
A spokesperson for We The Patriots USA said the plaintiffs plan to appeal the ruling to the Supreme Court.
"Attorney General Tong's assessment of the case is clearly inaccurate and reflects a fundamental misunderstanding of the rights embodied in the First Amendment. We are confident that we will prevail on appeal to the Supreme Court, and that this dark period of religious discrimination in this country will finally come to a close," the group wrote in a statement on Friday.
Connecticut law requires students receive certain immunizations before enrolling in school.
Under Connecticut’s new law, which applied to public and private schools, higher education, daycare and childcare centers, any students in kindergarten and older with an existing religious exemption were grandfathered in under a legacy provision.
Proponents of the repeal argued that eliminating the exemption will help prevent potential outbreaks of illnesses like measles. They cited a slow and steady increase in the number of religious exemptions for childhood vaccinations and declining vaccination rates in some particular schools.
Five other states do not offer religious exemptions for vaccines — California, New York, West Virginia, Mississippi and Maine, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.
U.S. Circuit Judge Joseph Bianco, an appointee of Republican President Donald Trump, dissented as to the majority’s dismissal of the free exercise claims without a sufficient level of scrutiny.
Bianco, a member of the Federalist Society since 2004, expressed concern about the precedent of the ruling as it would apply to a hypothetical mandate for Covid-19 vaccines for students in the future without providing any religious exemption.
“The majority opinion’s analysis not only extinguishes the free exercise rights of Connecticut schoolchildren in the context of this act, but has much broader ramifications for free exercise rights of individuals in the context of vaccine mandates more generally,” Bianco wrote his dissent.
“Therefore, challenges to any such mandatory vaccination laws, whether for Covid-19 or any other illness which the government deems sufficiently serious to warrant mandatory vaccinations in the future, would similarly be unable to survive a motion to dismiss on general applicability grounds under the majority opinion’s analysis once the government invoked generalized concerns about public safety,” Bianco wrote. “Such an approach allows the fundamental right of the free exercise of religion to be swept away under the mantle of rational basis review without any meaningful factual inquiry as to whether the differing treatment between the secular exemption and the religious exemption is warranted, even where a religious exemption has existed under the laws of a state for decades.”
After the circuit court’s decision Friday, the only part of the case that remains active is a single claim brought by one of the parent plaintiffs based on the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), which the Office of the Attorney General says they are confident will be dismissed by the lower court on remand.
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