Federal judge refuses to block Rhode Island COVID-19 vaccine mandate for health-care staff

PROVIDENCE — A federal judge on Friday refused to block a state Department of Health mandate that people working in the medical profession be vaccinated against COVID-19 or risk losing their jobs or other sanctions.

U.S. District Court Judge Mary S. McElroy late Friday refused to issue an order barring the state from enforcing the vaccine mandate imposed by state Department of Health Director Dr. Nicole Alexander-Scott in August that required people working in the medical profession to be vaccinated against COVID-19 by Oct. 1 of last year.

McElroy heard arguments in November from eight health-care workers, including two staff members at the state-run Eleanor Slater Hospital, challenging the regulation based on its failure to provide an exemption on religious grounds. They were seeking a preliminary injunction barring the state from enforcing the mandate, arguing that the state must provide a religious exemption if it extends a medical exemption.

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McElroy denied the request, finding that the workers had not shown they were likely to succeed on the merits of their claims.

Joseph S. Larisa Jr., who represented the health-care workers, said the plaintiffs were disappointed by the ruling and would appeal to the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. He urged Alexander-Scott and Gov. Dan McKee to reverse the "ill-advised" mandate.

"We believe that would serve public health better than allowing COVID-positive workers to work.... We think it's prudent as a matter of policy," he said.

"There are a bunch of health-care workers who could help out the Rhode Island health-care situation," Larisa said, estimating that the mandate was preventing "hundreds" of workers from performing their duties.

McElroy issued the ruling as hospitals and other health-care providers are facing dire staffing shortages and COVID-19 cases spike in Rhode Island and elsewhere. Eleanor Slater Hospital has reached such a crisis point that it is allowing asymptomatic infected staff to work.

In ruling, McElroy observed that Rhode Island has a history of requiring vaccinations for its heath-care workers. In 2002, the state began requiring health-care workers to prove they have been immunized against diseases such as measles, mumps, rubella and chicken pox.

"In deciding to issue the regulation, the RIDOH determined that reducing the number of unvaccinated personnel who can expose vulnerable patients to a potentially deadly disease in the health-care setting is of utmost importance," McElroy said.

Th central goal, she said, is to permit only vaccinated personnel near patients to help stem COVID transmission to people in care.

The only exemptions are on narrow medical grounds, such as severe allergic reactions to the vaccines. Those employees must then comply with masking and testing regimens.

The state reported that 57,757 of its 61,016 medical workers have been vaccinated, with 365 others receiving the medical exemption.

According to lawyers for the state, the COVID vaccine mandate does not prohibit an employer from considering requests for religious exemptions. A worker with such an exemption, however, would not be allowed to enter a health-care facility.

It's that limitation that the workers — who are using pseudonyms to shield their identities — object to based on “sincerely held religious beliefs." They object to the use of "aborted fetal cell lines" in the vaccines' development.

(The vaccines themselves do not contain aborted fetal cells, according to Joseph Wendelken, spokesman for the state Department of Health.)

"Courts in this country have held for over a century that mandatory vaccination laws are a valid exercise of a state’s police powers, and such laws have withstood constitutional challenges," McElroy wrote.

Contrary to the workers' arguments, McElroy found that the evidence shows that the object of the regulation is public health, not to discriminate against religious beliefs or practices.

The judge distinguished the vaccine mandate regulation from the state's law on immunizations for private and public schools, which provides both a medical and a religious exemption. State lawmakers, through a political process, had decided to include a religious exemption in that case, though it was not constitutionally required, she said.

McElroy rejected arguments, too, that the mandate was preempted by Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which forbids discrimination based on religion. She concluded that there is nothing in the mandate that prevents employers from considering exemptions based on religious beliefs, as required by Title VII. Instead, she said, it is silent on that issue.

Under federal guidance, employers must provide reasonable accommodations for workers with religious objections to vaccine mandates unless it would cause undue hardship.

McElroy looked to evidence that one facility had placed a worker on administrative leave because his or her duties could not be performed off-site.

"What this indicates is that in some cases, due to the need to limit the number of unvaccinated persons in a health care facility, accommodation is not possible without an undue hardship on the employer," McElroy said.

COVID by the numbers

Cases in R.I.: 266,066 (5,956 reported Friday)

Negative tests in R.I.: 6,468,404 (23,647 reported Friday; 20.1% positive rate)

R.I. COVID-related deaths: 3,121 (9 reported Friday)

Rhode Islanders hospitalized with COVID: 445 (54 in intensive care)

Fully vaccinated in R.I.: 789,145 (903,648 at least partially vaccinated)

Cases in Mass.: 1,250,765

Mass. COVID-related deaths: 20,510

Cases in U.S.: 58,794,313

U.S. COVID-related deaths: 834,734

This article originally appeared on The Providence Journal: Federal judge refuses to block RI COVID vaccine mandate