The Supreme Court denied a request Friday to block a Maine rule that requires health care workers to be fully vaccinated against COVID-19.

On August 12, Maine health officials revised the list of diseases against which health care workers must be vaccinated, adding COVID-19 to the list. Workers who have a valid medical exemption are not required to get the vaccine, but the mandate does not allow any exceptions for workers who have a religious objection to being vaccinated. A group of health care workers sued but were denied relief in the district and circuit courts. The workers then filed for an emergency injunction from the Supreme Court.

Justice Breyer presented the petition to the Court, and it was denied in a single-sentence order that did not explain the Court’s reasoning. Justice Barrett, joined by Justice Kavanaugh, wrote a short concurrence in which she worried about petitioners using the Court’s emergency docket “to force the Court to give a merits preview in cases that it would be unlikely to take,” especially since these sorts of emergency petitions do not receive a full briefing or any oral argument before the Court.

Justice Gorsuch, joined by Justices Thomas and Alito, wrote an eight-page dissent, arguing that by allowing medical exemptions while denying religious exemptions, Maine’s law enacts a “kind of double standard” that requires strict scrutiny. While Gorsuch agreed that the law serves a compelling state interest – stemming the spread of COVID-19 – he did not agree that Maine was using the least restrictive means for furthering that interest. The law “doesn’t just fail the least restrictive means test, it borders on the irrational,” he concluded.

The Maine law went into effect on the same day as the Court’s denial. The Court has been deferential to state vaccine mandates, allowing them to go into effect in New York City and at an Indiana university.