Liberties
Supreme Court declines Catholic mother's bid for son's vaccine exemption in N.Y.
By Julian Mark The Washington Post
Published Sept. 9, 2026
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The Supreme Court on Tuesday denied a New York woman's bid to send her son to kindergarten without receiving state-required vaccines, in a case that highlights the limits of the court's push to expand religious rights.
In a one-line order, the high court effectively sided with state and local officials, who argued that a religious exemption would undermine their attempts to prevent the spread of disease among children and the general public.
Justices Samuel A. Alito Jr. and Neil M. Gorsuch noted that they would have granted the mother's request.
The mother, identified in filings as "Jane Doe," had asked the court for an order allowing her 5-year-old son, "C.F.," to attend class by the beginning of the school year this month. She said that her Catholic beliefs prevented her from vaccinating herself or her son and that the state requirement would force her to choose between her son's education and her faith.
In recent years, the high court's conservative majority has been generally sympathetic to arguments for expanding the Constitution's rights regarding the free exercise of religion. But it has stopped short of granting religious exemptions involving general vaccine mandates, according to legal experts.
In October 2025, the justices declined a California woman's request to opt her son out of the state's student vaccine requirements for religious reasons. During the coronavirus pandemic, it similarly left in place vaccine mandates for health care workers who argued the mandates violated their constitutional right to freely exercise their religion.
New York has long required children who attend public schools to receive vaccines. For decades, the state allowed parents to opt their children out of the mandate for religious reasons. That changed in 2019, when New York City experienced its largest measles outbreak in three decades.
State lawmakers responded that year by repealing the religious exemption. They found that vaccination rates had fallen well below the threshold needed for "herd immunity," the proportion of vaccinated individuals need to prevent the spread of disease, the state attorney general's office wrote in its brief. The law still permits exemptions from the mandate for medical reasons.
Jane Doe said in court filings that her faith does not allow her to vaccinate herself or her son.
"Defiling the blood by mixing it with the blood of animals, with the remains of aborted human beings, or with foreign biological material, violates God's Word," she wrote in a statement of her religious beliefs. "Vaccination injects biological material derived from unclean sources directly into the bloodstream. My faith forbids this."
Lower courts rejected the woman's requests to allow her son to attend school without receiving all of his state-required vaccinations before she petitioned the Supreme Court.
The high court may examine the issue in other cases in its new term that begins in October.
This summer, a panel on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit dismissed a case brought by Amish parents seeking vaccine exemptions. The panel found that the parents could not assert religious or parental rights to seek vaccine exemptions for their children.
The Supreme Court had previously asked the 2nd Circuit to examine the issue in light of a recent case that found parents can opt their children out from LGBTQ+ lessons in public schools. Observers expect the Amish parents to appeal the 2nd Circuit's most recent opinion.
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