A three-judge panel of the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a new Connecticut law that would essentially abolish religious exemptions for school vaccination requirements while upholding medical exemptions, the Hartford Courant reports.
Citing Supreme Court precedents that allow states to set their own vaccination requirements for education, the federal court panel upheld the 2021 state law that required all children enrolling in school to have a slate of inoculations as necessary during the coronavirus pandemic. While the judges unanimously agreed that Connecticut had the constitutional authority to enact the vaccine regulation, the panel sent back to the lower court a portion of the case about the requirement for special-needs students to get vaccinated that related to how the opinion defined “special needs” and “special education” student.
“Connecticut’s decision to eliminate a religious exemption while permitting a medical exemption to the vaccine requirements undervalues the role of religious belief in American life and is irrational,” Norm Pattis, attorney for one of the plaintiff groups, We the Patriots, said. “As the good book says: ‘What does it profit a man to gain the whole world but lose his soul?’.”