Does v. Mills
The Supreme Court refused to temporarily block Maine's COVID-19 vaccine mandate for healthcare workers, leaving in place a rule that had no exemption for employees with sincere religious objections — meaning those who refused vaccination on religious grounds faced immediate job loss while their lawsuit continued.
The order is not a ruling on whether the mandate is constitutional; that question remains open in the lower courts. Justice Barrett's concurrence explained that emergency relief also requires assessing whether the Court would be likely to take the case at all, not just whether the applicants might win on the merits.
How it got here: Maine healthcare workers applied for emergency injunctive relief; Justice Breyer, the assigned Circuit Justice, referred the application to the full Court, which denied it.
The Case in Depth
What happened
Maine enacted a COVID-19 vaccine mandate for healthcare workers that included a medical exemption — allowing workers to skip vaccination with a doctor's note — but contained no exemption for workers whose sincere religious beliefs led them to object to the vaccines, which some believed were connected to the use of aborted fetal cell lines in their development or testing. A physician and eight other healthcare workers sued, and one had already lost her job by the time the case reached the Supreme Court.
The question before the Court
Could a group of religious healthcare workers get an emergency court order blocking Maine's COVID-19 vaccine mandate, which offered no exemption for employees with sincere religious objections?
The Court's answer
The Court declined to block the mandate. The denial order is one line and gives no reasoning, but Justice Barrett's concurrence — joined by Justice Kavanaugh — explained the Court's approach to emergency relief: the "likely to succeed on the merits" factor does not just ask whether the applicants would probably win their legal argument. It also includes a discretionary judgment about whether the Court would agree to hear the case at all. Because this was the first case to raise the specific questions about a vaccine mandate with no religious exemption, Barrett concluded that discretionary consideration weighed against granting emergency relief at this stage.
This denial is not a ruling on whether Maine's mandate is constitutional. Three justices dissented and would have granted relief, arguing the mandate's no-religious-exemption rule almost certainly violated the First Amendment and that the healthcare workers were suffering irreparable harm in the meantime.
Curious how the Court got there? See the step-by-step legal reasoning →
Why it matters
Healthcare workers in Maine who refused the COVID-19 vaccine for religious reasons had no temporary court protection and faced termination. Justice Barrett's concurrence also signaled a meaningful limit on the Court's emergency docket: applicants cannot use it simply to preview legal questions in cases the Court would likely decline to hear.
What changes now
The vaccine mandate remained in effect, and healthcare workers who refused vaccination for religious reasons could be terminated while their case continued in the lower courts. The underlying lawsuit — challenging whether Maine's refusal to offer a religious exemption violates the First Amendment — was still pending, and the Court's denial left open the possibility that the workers could eventually win on the merits or seek review again if circumstances changed.
What this does not decide
The Court did not decide whether Maine's vaccine mandate without a religious exemption is constitutional. It only declined to pause the mandate temporarily during the ongoing lawsuit. The First Amendment question remains open and could return to the Court if and when it agrees to hear a case raising it.
Concurrences and dissents
Concurrence — Justice Barrett
Justice Barrett, joined by Justice Kavanaugh, agreed with denying relief but wrote to explain that the 'likely to succeed on the merits' factor for emergency applications includes a discretionary question about whether the Court would even agree to hear the case — not just whether the applicant might win. Because this was the first case to address a vaccine mandate with no religious exemption, that discretionary judgment counseled against granting the extraordinary relief of an emergency injunction.
Dissent — Justice Gorsuch
Justice Gorsuch, joined by Justices Thomas and Alito, argued that Maine's mandate was not neutral or generally applicable because it let workers avoid vaccination for medical reasons but not religious ones — a double standard requiring strict constitutional scrutiny. He concluded Maine failed that test because its vaccination targets were already being met without denying religious exemptions, most other states with similar mandates offered religious exemptions, and the workers were suffering real and irreparable harm to their First Amendment rights.
How the Court got there
The legal reasoning, step by step
- To obtain emergency injunctive relief from the Supreme Court, an applicant must satisfy several factors — most importantly, showing they are likely to succeed on the merits, that they will suffer irreparable harm without relief, and that the public interest supports pausing the challenged action.
- Justice Barrett's concurrence clarified that 'likely to succeed on the merits' has two components: whether the applicant would probably win the underlying constitutional argument, and — separately — whether the Court would likely agree to take the case in the first place (because emergency relief serves no purpose if the Court would never hear the appeal anyway).
- Because this was the first case to address a vaccine mandate with no religious exemption, Barrett found that second, discretionary component weighed against granting relief: the Court should not use emergency applications to preview legal questions in cases it might decline to hear, especially on a compressed timeline without full briefing and oral argument.
- The three dissenters applied the Free Exercise Clause test — which asks whether a law is 'neutral and generally applicable' toward religion. Under existing precedent, a law fails that test if it creates a mechanism for individualized exemptions that favors secular reasons over religious ones, because then the government must satisfy the most demanding constitutional test (strict scrutiny — requiring a very strong government reason and a narrowly tailored means).
- The dissenters concluded Maine's mandate was not neutral or generally applicable because it allowed medical exemptions but barred religious ones for the same underlying conduct, and argued this selective treatment triggered strict scrutiny regardless of how laudable the State's health goals were.
- The dissenters further argued Maine failed strict scrutiny because the State could not show its no-exemption policy was strictly necessary: vaccination rates at covered facilities already exceeded the State's own stated 90% threshold, and most other states with similar mandates managed to include a religious exemption.