Supreme Court Rejects New York Mom’s Bid to Keep Unvaccinated Son in Kindergarten

The U.S. Supreme Court declined a New York mother’s request to let her keep her unvaccinated five-year-old in kindergarten while she challenges the state’s ban on religious exemptions to school immunization rules.

The high court’s decision on Sept. 8 took the form of an unsigned order in Doe v. McDonald. It gave no reasons.

Justices Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch dissented, saying they would have granted the emergency application. They did not explain why.

The emergency docket ruling is narrow. The Supreme Court did not decide whether New York’s ban on religious exemptions is constitutional. It only declined to freeze the status quo for one child while the case moves through the lower courts.

The applicant was identified as Jane Doe, the mother of C.F., her minor son.

The respondents were James V. McDonald, commissioner of health for the state of New York, Eastchester Union Free School District, and Caitlin Mondelli, principal of Waverly School.

Doe is described in the application as “a lifelong practicing Roman Catholic whose sincerely held religious beliefs prohibit her from consenting to further vaccination of C.F.”

She filed a statement detailing her religious beliefs with the Waverly School in Eastchester, New York, on April 7, seeking an exemption from the vaccinations for her son. Days later, the school district told her the state has banned non-medical exemptions since 2019.

School starts Sept. 2. The district said C.F. would be excluded 14 days later without the required shots.

New York Public Health Law, Section 2164, requires students to receive certain vaccinations to attend school. Since 2019, it has offered no religious exemption, though it still recognizes medical exemptions.

Doe filed a lawsuit in May under a federal law that lets people sue state and local officials in federal court when those officials violate constitutional or federal rights. She argued that Section 2164, as applied to C.F., violates the free exercise clause, as well as her constitutional right to direct her child’s religious upbringing.

She moved for a preliminary injunction. U.S. District Judge Kenneth Karas denied her request on July 10, saying the case was not likely to succeed on the merits.

A three-judge motions panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit denied the injunction on Aug. 11 in a brief order, citing a prior Second Circuit precedent known as Agudath Israel of America v. Cuomo (2020), which lays out the usual standard for granting injunctions.

That precedent states that an injunction affecting government action taken in the public interest can be granted only if the applicant faces irreparable harm, a likelihood of success on the merits, and the injunction would serve the public interest.

In the application, Doe’s attorneys said that because New York “provides no school-attendance route for a religiously objecting unvaccinated child,” Doe and her child were facing the possibility of “imminent forced relocation” to Florida, which still allows religious exemption for school vaccines.

New York Attorney General Letitia James, representing the health commissioner, opposed the application and urged the Supreme Court to deny the injunction.

She said in her brief that the state changed its mandatory vaccination law in 2019 to respond to what was at the time the nation’s worst measles outbreak in 25 years. The Legislature repealed the religious exemption—the only non-medical exemption—to the vaccination mandate to maximize vaccination rates and prevent the spread of contagious diseases.

The state policy has a rational basis and would also pass the tougher standard known as heightened scrutiny, James said.

The litigation continues in the Second Circuit.