A Colorado university’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate violates the U.S. Constitution, a federal court has ruled.
The mandate was later updated, but the newer version also violates the Constitution, according to the judges.
The University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus in 2021 required COVID-19 vaccination of all students and employees. It initially offered religious exemptions to anyone who checked a box, but it later stated that administrators would “only recognize religious exemptions based on religious beliefs whose teachings are opposed to all immunizations.”
Officials, for instance, said Christian Scientists would qualify for an exemption but Buddhists would not.
They also said exemptions would be granted only to people who never received any vaccinations.
Medical exemptions, on the other hand, were available if a doctor said the prospective recipient’s health or life would be endangered.
Seventeen students and employees, all of whose applications were denied, sued over the policy, alleging that it was discriminatory.
U.S. District Judge Raymond Moore, an appointee of President Barack Obama, ruled in 2022 that the plaintiffs did not show that they would suffer irreparable harm absent a stay of the initial mandate and that they had not met the burden of showing that the updated mandate was not neutral.
The case against the original mandate also became moot because the requirements were updated, the judge said.
That ruling was wrong, according to the appeals court, in part because the initial mandate was used to fire two employee plaintiffs and Judge Moore placed the burden regarding mootness on the plaintiffs.
Under the original policy, Anschutz administrators “rejected applicants’ beliefs based not on their sincerity, but rather on their perceived validity,” according to the new ruling. Even after the administrators received numerous pages of explanations of religious beliefs, they denied each application. They rejected one application because officials claimed that it was “morally acceptable” for Catholics to receive COVID-19 vaccines, judging any position otherwise as a personal objection as opposed to a religious one.
The policy was “explicitly non-neutral” because, according to a ruling in a separate case, the First Amendment does not allow governments to “discriminate in favor of some religions and against others,” according to the majority.
Policies that infringe on constitutional rights can survive under “strict scrutiny” if officials can prove that they are justified by a “compelling state interest” and are “narrowly tailored in pursuit of that interest.” Anschutz stated that it was motivated by a desire to stem the spread of COVID-19 but “has not even attempted to explain why its interest is served by granting exemptions to practitioners of some religions, but not others,” according to the panel.
The purported update on Sept. 24, 2021, was said to assess whether religious exemption requests were “made based on a sincerely-held religious belief,” but evaluations conducted under that policy reached the same results, indicating that the updated version “was a mere pretext to continue the Administration’s September 1 Policy,” the majority wrote. It stated that the updated version also failed the strict scrutiny test because it has a lower bar for medical exemptions than religious exemptions.
U.S. Circuit Judge Allison Eid, an appointee of President Donald Trump, authored the opinion. She was joined by Circuit Judge Jerome Holmes, who was appointed by President George W. Bush.
“The September 24 mandate is neutral toward religion and generally applicable,” he said.
Defendants in the case included the University of Colorado’s Board of Regents and officials at the University of Colorado Anschutz School of Medicine.
The board and the school did not respond to requests for comment.
The appeal was brought by the Thomas More Society on behalf of the students and employees.
“The University of Colorado ran roughshod [over staff] and students of faith during COVID, and the court of appeals has now declared plainly what we’ve fought to establish for almost three years: the university acted with ‘religious animus’ and flagrantly violated the fundamental religious liberties of these brave healthcare providers and students,” Peter Breen, executive president of the society, said in a statement.
“The court of appeals correctly ruled that no government entity has the right to appoint itself as a doctrinal tribunal that defines which religious beliefs count as deeply and sincerely held and deem those religious beliefs valid or invalid.”
