A group of unvaccinated Maine health care workers are asking the Supreme Court to block a state rule that mandates certain health care facilities require their employees to be fully vaccinated, arguing that the requirement violates their religious liberty rights.
So far, the justices have declined invitations to strike down vaccine mandates at Indiana University and New York City schools, but the Maine dispute could be different.
That’s because the workers are making religious claims that could attract some of the justices.
The Catholic Church and the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the church’s highest doctrinal authority, have wrestled with the moral permissibility of receiving Covid-19 vaccines because of their distant relation to fetal cell lines developed from abortions in the 1970s and 1980s.
The AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson vaccines were developed using aborted cell lines, though the final product does not contain fetal cells. The Pfizer and Moderna vaccines were not manufactured from fetal cell lines and the final product does not contain fetal cells, although their testing used these cell lines.
