The U.S. Supreme Court this week decided not to take up an appeal by parents seeking to challenge New York lawmakers’ 2019 removal of the religious exemption to vaccination requirements for schoolchildren.
The court’s May 23 order announcing its decision not to hear arguments in the case F.F. v. New York allows a lower court decision to stand. The lower court concluded the parents’ arguments lacked merit and the state was not targeting religion when it eliminated the religious exemption.
“Today we learned that the U.S Supreme Court will not hear the religious repeal case we have argued for the last almost three years,” lead attorney Michael Sussman told Autism Action Network (AAN).
Sussman said in an AAN email to members:
“As those who have followed the case know, the legislature in NY repealed the 50-year-old religious exemption for students in June 2019. It did so with hateful rhetoric accusing religious people of being fraudsters.
“I believe this violated the first amendment which this court explicitly has held does not suffer any state action smitten with religious intolerance. I had expected this court to reaffirm this principle, but four justices did not vote to hear our case.
“So, we have lost. The only hope now is in the state legislature and hope is hard to find there.”