The Supreme Court Didn’t Take the New York Vaccine Mandate Case. Here’s Why That Matters.

By - Joe Zamboni, J.D., M.P.H.

On Monday morning, the Supreme Court released a list of cases it has decided to hear - and an even longer list of cases it decided not to hear.

This week, tucked away on that list, was another chapter in the long-running litigation over COVID-19 vaccine mandates.

The Court declined to hear a challenge brought by former New York healthcare workers who argued they were unlawfully denied religious accommodations from the state’s COVID-19 vaccine requirement.

At first glance, that might sound like the Supreme Court sided with New York.

It didn’t.

Wait...what does “denied certiorari” actually mean?

The Supreme Court hears only a tiny fraction of the thousands of cases that ask for review each year.

When the Court denies certiorari (or simply “denies cert”), it is saying only one thing:

We’re not taking this case.

That’s it.

It is not a ruling that the lower court got the law right. It is not an endorsement of the decision. And it does not create nationwide precedent.

Instead, the decision of the lower court - in this case, the Second Circuit - remains controlling only within that circuit.

What was the dispute?

During the COVID-19 pandemic, New York required most healthcare workers to be vaccinated.

An early version of the emergency rule included language recognizing religious accommodations. That language was later removed, and the final regulation did not allow healthcare workers to receive a blanket religious exemption from vaccination.

Several healthcare workers requested religious accommodations under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act.

When those requests were denied and the workers lost their jobs, they sued.

Their argument was straightforward:

Federal law requires employers to provide reasonable religious accommodations unless doing so creates an undue hardship. Because Title VII is federal law, they argued it should override any conflicting state regulation under the Supremacy Clause.

New York saw it differently

The State and the healthcare employers emphasized an important distinction.

They argued they were not prohibited from offering religious accommodations altogether.

Rather, they argued the regulation prohibited only the accommodation the employees wanted - a complete exemption from the vaccination requirement.

Employers could still consider other accommodations, such as transferring employees into positions where they would not expose patients or coworkers to COVID-19.

That distinction became central to the case.

The Second Circuit agreed

The Second Circuit concluded that granting the employees’ requested accommodation - a complete exemption from vaccination - would have required employers to violate New York’s regulation.

Doing so could have exposed hospitals to enforcement actions, monetary penalties, or even licensing consequences.

Because of those risks, the court held that granting the requested accommodation would impose an “undue hardship” under Title VII.

In other words, the court concluded that employers were not required to provide the specific accommodation the workers requested.

Why were the workers asking the Supreme Court to step in?

The petitioners argued that the Second Circuit got something much bigger wrong.

They claimed the decision effectively allows state law to override federal civil rights protections.

Their position was that employers should not be able to point to conflicting state law as an excuse for failing to comply with Title VII’s accommodation requirements. They also argued that several federal appellate decisions suggest conflicting state laws must yield when they require conduct prohibited by federal anti-discrimination statutes.

The Supreme Court, however, declined to resolve that dispute.

Justice Neil Gorsuch dissented from the denial of review, continuing his longstanding interest in COVID-19 vaccine mandate cases and religious accommodation questions.

So...what does this mean going forward?

Quite a bit - and not as much as some headlines suggest.

For employers in New York, Connecticut, and Vermont, the Second Circuit’s decision remains the governing law.

But outside the Second Circuit, the larger legal question is still very much alive.

Federal courts have taken different approaches to the interaction between Title VII’s religious accommodation requirements and state public health regulations. That disagreement remains unresolved because the Supreme Court chose not to answer it here.

It’s also worth remembering that New York repealed its COVID-19 healthcare worker vaccine rule in 2023. So this particular mandate is history.

The next fight is more likely to arise if another state adopts a similar healthcare vaccination requirement - or if courts confront a comparable conflict between state public health regulations and federal employment discrimination law.

The Bottom Line

The Supreme Court’s denial closes this case, but it doesn’t settle the law nationwide.

The Court did not decide that the Second Circuit was correct.

It did not resolve whether Title VII preempts conflicting state vaccination mandates.

And it leaves an important legal question waiting for another case, another day, and perhaps another Supreme Court docket.

Sometimes, what the Supreme Court chooses not to decide can be just as interesting as what it does.