First Circuit: Absence of Exception to Maine’s COVID-19 Vaccine Mandate for Religious Reasons Raises Plausible Violation of Free Exercise Clause

First Circuit: Absence of Exception to Maine’s COVID-19 Vaccine Mandate for Religious Reasons Raises Plausible Violation of Free Exercise Clause

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit reversed a district court’s dismissal of claims raised by Maine healthcare workers based on violations to their rights under the Free Exercise and Equal Protection Clauses of the U.S. Constitution.

Specifically, the claims argued that Maine’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate violated the cited constitutional clauses because it did not provide an exemption for religious reasons.

The district court granted Maine’s motion to dismiss, concluding that the mandate is a religiously neutral law of general applicability that is rationally related to Maine's legitimate public health interests, which meant that it does not violate the Free Exercise or Equal Protection Clauses.

The First Circuit disagreed. First, based on the standard of review applicable to motions to dismiss, it concluded that the plaintiffs’ allegations were sufficient to trigger strict scrutiny since it was plausible that the law treated a comparable secular activity more favorably than religious exercise. The court of appeals reached this conclusion based on the allegations that the law allows some number of unvaccinated individuals to continue working in healthcare facilities based on medical exemptions while refusing to allow individuals to continue working while unvaccinated for religious reasons.

Second, based on the allegations before it, the intermediate appellate court concluded that the plaintiffs raised a plausible claim that the mandate was not narrowly tailored to advance a compelling government interest.

With respect to the plaintiffs’ claims under the Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the First Circuit affirmed the lower court’s dismissal. It did so based on its conclusion that the allegations established that violating the mandate in order to provide the plaintiffs’ requested accommodation would have caused undue hardship for their employers.