Anti-vaxxers suing state represented by national anti-LGBTQ hate group – mainebeacon.com
A federal judge is expected to rule this week on whether Maine’s vaccine mandate for health care workers is unconstitutional because it does not include religious exemptions.
The lawsuit was filed August 25 on behalf of “2,000 anonymous” plaintiffs represented by the Liberty Counsel, a hyper-conservative religious non-profit group known for its hateful anti-LGBTQ rhetoric. They are listed on the Southern Poverty Law Center’s website as a designated hate group.
Liberty Counsel founder Mat Staver is well known for his anti-LGBTQ attacks. In 2015, he said the Boy Scouts allowing gay members would result in “sexual molestation” and create a “playground for pedophiles.” Two years earlier, Staver had baselessly claimed that marriage equality would cause the “end of society” and lead to disease outbreaks.
The counsel also represented anti-LGBTQ icon Kim Davis, a Kentucky county clerk who was sued after refusing to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples in 2015. More recently in 2021, Liberty Counsel attempted to reverse gay conversion therapy bans through the introduction of state legislation.
Defendants in the vaccine mandate lawsuit include Gov. Janet Mills and officials at the Maine Department of Health and Human Services. Maine’s largest hospital systems — Northern Light Health, MaineGeneral Health and MaineHealth — are also defendants.
“The requirement in Maine that health care workers be vaccinated against COVID-19 is based on a determination by public health experts that it is necessary to limit the spread of COVID-19 in health care facilities and to protect Maine’s health care system,” Maine Attorney General Aaron Frey, who is representing the defendants in this suit, said. “We will vigorously defend the requirement against this lawsuit and we are confident that it will be upheld.”
Maine health care providers already require their workers to be vaccinated against the flu, measles, Hepatitis B and other infectious diseases. Mills’ mandate adds the COVID vaccine to that list.
“For many years the state has required health care workers to be vaccinated against various communicable diseases and, to our knowledge, that requirement has never been challenged,” Frey said. “The state has now simply added an additional disease — COVID-19 — to the list of ones for which health care workers must be vaccinated.”
“Federal courts, including the United States Supreme Court, have consistently upheld mandatory vaccination requirements,” Frey continued. “Most recently, [U.S. Supreme Court] Justice Amy Coney Barrett refused to enjoin Indiana University’s requirement that students be vaccinated against COVID-19. Lower federal courts had previously upheld the constitutionality of the requirement.”
Meanwhile, Liberty Counsel has kept to the oft-used Christian argument for religious exemptions. They claim the various COVID vaccines may have utilized aborted fetal cell lines, citing a Bible verse that describes the human body as “God’s temple of the Holy Spirit.” According to the Counsel’s logic, receiving the COVID vaccine would therefore be a sin.
The Counsel also believes the exclusion of religious exemptions in the Maine mandate violates the First Amendment and a clause of the 1964 Civil Rights Act.
“In general, employee vaccine religious exemption requests must be accommodated, where a reasonable accommodation exists without undue hardship to the employer, under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964,” Liberty Counsel wrote in a statement. “Many people hold sincere religious beliefs against taking any vaccines, or taking those derived from aborted fetal cell lines, or taking those sold by companies that profit from the sale of vaccines and other products derived from abortion.”
“These employees,” the group continued, “do not shed their constitutional rights upon entering government employment. Maine law provides a long-established common law right to all individuals to refuse unwanted medical care.”
On September 20, U.S. District Court Judge Jon Levy heard oral arguments from the parties. He stated concern that overturning the COVID vaccine mandate could provide precedent to remove the existing vaccine requirements for health care workers. Ruling against Maine’s COVID mandate could also inadvertently hinder Maine’s law ending religious exemptions for school children, Levy said.
In May 2019, Mills signed a law that required pre-kindergarten through 12th grade students be vaccinated against certain diseases unless they have a medical exemption, removing the often-exploited ideological exemption. This resulted in a people’s referendum led by “Maine Families for Vaccines,” an anti-vaccine group that sought to overturn the law, which ultimately failed in 2020.
“I don’t understand how I get to the conclusion you want without invalidating the rule that added a COVID-19 vaccine to the list of required vaccines?” Levy said during oral arguments. “How do I get to a more limited decision?”
Observers say it is unlikely that Liberty Counsel will be successful in their Maine suit.
To date, no major organized religions have denounced the lack of a religious exemption in COVID vaccine mandates.
“In cases where you’ve got a lot of potential insincere claims — and I think there’s evidence that is what’s happening here in which people are raising religious objections when they’re motivated by fear of the vaccine or political opposition to it — testing sincerity makes sense,” Thomas Berg, a religious liberty advocate who teaches law at the University of St. Thomas, told NBC recently.
“We have to test sincerity or else we have to accept them all or deny them all, so I think the courts will provide room for testing that,” Berg added.
As Frey pointed out, lawsuits against the mandate are being pursued by a vocal minority, as most Mainers support the state’s public health precautions.
“The overwhelming majority of eligible Mainers have received their first dose of vaccine, but we can do better to protect the lives and livelihoods of Mainers,” Frey said.
“The vast majority of COVID-19 hospitalizations are among unvaccinated individuals, and this has left Maine with a limited number of available ICU beds,” Frey added. “If you have not done so already, please get vaccinated. It is a simple and commonsense thing you can do to protect not only yourself, but also your loved ones, co-workers, and the community.”
Photo: Joe Raedle, Getty Images