SCOTUS Revisits COVID Vaccine Religious Exemptions For Children

Does the Constitution provide parents the freedom to choose their children’s vaccination requirements? Can schools legally prohibit children from attending if their parents refuse vaccinations, including experimental ones? The U.S. Supreme Court must re-examine this case in New York as members of the Amish community plea with the state to permit religious exemptions.

Miller v. McDonald repealed the religious exemption from immunization requirements. The case traveled up to the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit and took into account a case in which Maryland parents demanded their elementary school children be exempt from LGBTQ+ curriculum. SCOTUS ruled 6-3 that public schools cannot force children to participate in blatant grooming exercises without parental consent.

The two components will be considered simultaneously. How much leverage do public schools have over American children? “A book is not going to affect your child’s health or another child’s health,” said state Assemblymember Jeffrey Dinowitz, the Bronx Democrat who sponsored the 2019 repeal (S2994A/A2371A). “But if children aren’t vaccinated, that could affect your child, and other children as well.”

The initial case was filed by Joseph Miller, Ezra Wengerd, and Jonas Smucker, along with three Amish schools, who sued education and health officials for forcing their children to take the COVID vaccine. In March 2025, the Second Circuit sided with the state and dismissed the claims, deciding that a blanket vaccine mandate did not violate the Constitution’s Free Exercise Clause. Yet, New York does permit medical exemptions on a religious basis and the parents did not believe the case was neutral.

“The Department anticipates that the federal courts will respect the Legislature’s determination that a religious exemption from school-age vaccinations is not available,” New York State Education Department said in a statement. “If the Second Circuit—or, more likely, a majority of the Supreme Court—creates a common law religious exemption, its contours would be defined by the decision.”

The Amish plaintiffs pointed to a 1972 SCOTUS ruling in Wisconsin v. Yoder that permitted Amish kids to leave school after eighth grade. The Second Circuit denied their claims and said that Yoder did not provide parents with the ability to forego COVID vaccination mandates.

Leaked White House audio shows that the Department of Justice (DoJ) understood that religious Americans may feel morally opposed to the vaccine as it contains or was tested on aborted fetal tissue. There was even speculation that Pfizer used aborted fetuses that were discarded to create the vaccine, but since the company is not required to disclose anything about the vaccine, we do not know the truth.

Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was designed to protect workers from religious discrimination if they have a “sincerely held belief.” However, some employers are requesting that employees admit whether they use common medicine such as Tums, Motrin, Tylenol, Benadryl, Claritin, and Aspirin among others as they were also developed using fetal cells. In the leaked audio, a lawyer from the DoJ states employees can honestly say they did not know that those medications were tested on fetal cells and will discontinue their use.

First Amendment: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”