Religious Maine Health-Care Workers’ Covid Vaccine Suit Back On

Bloomberg reports

Maine must face seven health-care workers’ claims that its rule limiting exemptions from the state’s Covid-19 vaccine mandate violates their free exercise of religion and equal protection rights, the First Circuit ruled Thursday.

The three-judge panel stressed that its holding was narrow and turned on the early stage at which a lower court dismissed the suit. At issue was simply whether the seven workers plausibly alleged that the state’s exclusion of the possibility of religious exemptions from its mandate while allowing for potential medical exemptions meant Maine treats a comparable secular activity more favorably than the exercise of religious rights. …