Mat Staver, founder and chairman of Liberty Counsel, can hardly wait to challenge Maine Governor Janet Mills at the Supreme Court. He and his public-interest law firm asked the high court on Tuesday to let him contest a lower court’s ruling:
Gov. Janet Mills and [Maine’s] health officials fired health care employees for refusing the COVID shot even though they knew that Maine has an ongoing health care shortage.
These same health care professionals worked tirelessly during COVID but were then kicked to the curb when Gov. Mills enacted her unlawful and abusive shot mandate.
Mills and the employers violated federal law. These health care heroes deserve justice.
And if Supreme Court Justice Neal Gorsuch is correct, they will get it. Wrote Gorsuch: “A state law [that is] at odds with a valid Act of Congress is no law at all. Accordingly, the demands of the federal [Title VII] law do not yield to state laws that discriminate against the [protected class]; it works the other way around.”
It all began when the governor of Maine seized the opportunity presented by the so-called Covid crisis to remove the religious exemption from state law that previously allowed employees at the state’s hospitals to avoid the jab.
One of those whom Staver represents, Alicia Lowe, wrote to her employer MaineHealth in May 2021 requesting exemption from the experimental vaccines for religious reasons. She received this response:
Please be advised that due to the addition of the COVID-19 vaccine to Maine’s Healthcare Worker Immunization law announced by the governor in a press conference on 8/12/21, we are no longer able to consider religious exemptions for those who work in the state of Maine.
Lowe knew enough federal law and the protections provided by it to respond:
My request for an exemption was made under federal law, including Title VII of the Civil Rights [Act] of 1964. The Constitution provides that federal law is supreme over state law, and Maine cannot abolish the protections of federal law….
Regardless of what the Governor chooses to do, Franklin Memorial [MaineHealth’s owner] has a legal obligation under federal law to consider and grant my proper request for a religious exemption.
Please let me know promptly if you will do so.
They did. They fired her. In fact, they fired her in such a way that she, after years of serving MaineHealth as a health practitioner, would be unable to claim unemployment insurance.
She was not alone. It is estimated that more than 3,000 healthcare workers in Maine were fired for the same reason, adding to the state’s record-setting nurse shortage.
As Staver’s petition to the high court states, “Despite the plain import of Title VII’s requirement that employers provide accommodation for Petitioners’ sincerely held religious convictions, all [of them] explicitly informed Petitioners that their religious convictions must be overridden by state law, with no exception and no accommodation whatsoever.”
Liberty Counsel expanded on just how deeply held were the Petitioners’ religious beliefs:
Petitioners have sincerely held religious beliefs that precluded them from accepting or receiving any of the three then-available COVID-19 vaccines because of their connection to aborted fetal cell lines, whether in the vaccines’ origination, production, development, or testing.
A fundamental component of Petitioners’ sincerely held religious beliefs is that all life is sacred, from the moment of conception to natural death, and that abortion is a grave sin against God and the taking of an innocent life.
Petitioners’ sincerely held religious beliefs are rooted in Scripture’s teachings that “[a]ll Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, [and] for instruction in righteousness.”
Because of their sincerely held religious beliefs, Petitioners must conform their lives, including their decisions relating to medical care, to the commands and teaching of Scripture.
Petitioners have sincerely held religious beliefs that God forms children in the womb and knows them prior to their births, and that life is sacred from the moment of conception.
Petitioners have sincerely held religious beliefs that every child’s life is sacred because each child is made in the image of God.
And, because life is sacred from the moment of conception, the killing of that innocent life is the murder of an innocent human in violation of Scripture.
Petitioners also have the sincerely held religious belief that it would be better to tie millstones around their necks and be drowned in the sea than bring harm to an innocent child.
Petitioners have sincerely held religious beliefs, rooted in the Scriptures, that anything that condones, supports, justifies, or benefits from the taking of innocent human life via abortion is sinful, and contrary to the Scriptures.
Petitioners believe that it is an affront to Scripture’s teaching for them to use a product derived from or connected in any way with abortion.
Petitioners’ sincerely held religious beliefs therefore precluded them from accepting any one of the three available COVID-19 vaccines because of their connections to aborted fetal cell lines.
These beliefs cost them their jobs and their incomes, forcing many to use up their savings and retirement plans while trying to find other work. As Jesus said, “In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.” With the assistance of Staver and Liberty Counsel, they might also receive some modest recompense.
