U.S. Supreme Court issues several landmark rulings, including unanimous decision that makes it harder for employers to deny “vaccine” religious exemptions

TheCOVIDBlog.com
July 3, 2023

WASHINGTON, D.C. — The U.S. Supreme Court issued several impactful decisions last week, with two of them directly related to the First Amendment and religious freedom. The affirmative action (AA) case, however, received the most attention.

The aforementioned decision was actually two cases – Students for Fair Admissions v. University of North Carolina and Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard. The two cases were argued separately, but ultimately consolidated into one under the Harvard title. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson recused herself from the Harvard case since she was a member of the Harvard Board of Overseers prior to being appointed to the Supreme Court.

The Court, in a 6-2 decision (and 6-3 in the North Carolina case), struck down race-based admissions at colleges, except for the military academies (since World War III is likely soon). Chief Justice John Roberts, writing for the majority in the 48-page opinion, ruled that race-based affirmative action violates the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment.

The decision is pretty straightforward, considering that AA was never actual law anyway. It originates from President John F. Kennedy’s Executive Order 10925. The March 6, 1961 EO stated that government contractors must “take affirmative action to ensure that applicants are employed, and employees are treated during employment, without regard to their race, creed, color, or national origin.”

RELATED: Biden Administration, Fauci suffer more setbacks, as federal judge strikes down CDC mask mandate for airplanes, travel (April 19, 2022)

 

The spirit of AA was codified on July 2, 1964 with the Civil Rights Act (more on that in a bit). President Lyndon Johnson expanded AA via Executive Order to include sex/gender in 1967. Ultimately AA was an Executive Order and not the law, just like Biden’s vaccine mandates, Obama’s DACA for illegal immigrants, Trump’s Executive Order 13767 to “build the wall,” etc.

All of the foregoing, like AA, were either struck down by the Courts or never came to fruition. The only reason AA lasted so long was because much of its purpose was codified by the Civil Rights Act. The ironic fact remains that White women are/were the biggest benefactors and fiercest opponents of AA.

And for even more irony and a bit of humor, several toxic feminist, liberal Black women were fired from their mainstream media “diversity and inclusion” jobs last week. They allowed themselves to be used as Black face tools to promote and foster homosexual culture within their respective organizations. All of them got fired before the ink was dry on the Harvard AA case.

You reap what you sow.

Regardless, the Supreme Court got this decision right, except for upholding legacy admissions (e.g. George W. Bush being admitted to Yale solely because both daddy HW Bush and granddaddy Prescott Bush went there), high-donor admissions, Chinese fake testing admissions, fake sports admissions, and other loopholes/crimes that allow rich people to buy or manipulate college admissions for their kids. The third bit of irony – affirmation action for rich people was upheld.

Christian, other religious content creators can refuse to create homosexual content

This case was a broader version of the 2018 Supreme Court decision in Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission. Both the case decided last week, 303 Creative LLC v. Elenis, and Masterpiece Cakeshop, involved Colorado business owners and the Colorado Anti-Discrimination Act (CADA).

The 2018 case involved a Christian cake shop owner who refused to make a “wedding cake” for two dudes. The Supreme Court ruled in favor of the cake shop owner because the state of Colorado was openly hostile towards Christians and “[failed] to act in a manner neutral to religion.” That very narrow ruling left open further interpretation of the CADA.

The 303 Creative case involves graphic designer Lorie Smith. She designs, among other things, wedding websites. But she refused to design sites for homosexuals because it violated her First Amendment right to religious expression.

The landmark 6-3 Supreme Court ruling held that the First Amendment prohibits states from forcing “expressive businesses” to create content in violation of their values. The Court left open for interpretation what “qualifies as expressive activity protected by the First Amendment.” But the ruling very likely applies to all artists, writers, musicians and anyone else considered a content creator.

As fully expected, the three liberal female judges, including the one who cannot define the word “woman…”

…fallaciously invoked the 1967 Loving vs. Virginia criminal case in their dissent, to shamelessly attempt equating homosexual culture to race and ethnicity. Justice Sonia Sotomayor, the one who flat-out lied and said “100,000 children are hospitalized and on ventilators” due to COVID-19 in early 2022, wrote, citing Loving:

“A website designer could equally refuse to create a wedding website for an interracial couple, for example. How quickly we forget that opposition to interracial marriage was often because “’Almighty God…did not intend for the races to mix.’”

RELATED: Illinois administrative judge rules that former Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot exceeded statutory power by unilaterally implementing vaccine mandate for unionized workers (April 26, 2023)

 

The “Almighty God” quote was from the Virginia judge who convicted Black Mildred Jeter and White Richard Loving for violating the state’s anti-miscegenation law, aka outlawing interracial marriage. Sotomayor (deliberately) failed to mention three important facts:

1. Virginia cops raided the Loving couple’s home, found them in bed together, and used their marriage license to prosecute them. Thus the cops racially targeted them.

2. Virginia’s anti-miscegenation law only outlawed interracial marriages with White people and any other race. Black and Mexican, Asian and Indian, etc. were not prohibited from interracial marriage. Thus the law violated the Equal Protection Clause.

3. The all-White*, all-male U.S. Supreme Court, in 1967, unanimously struck down the Virginia and all other anti-miscegenation laws, ruling that said laws are “obviously an endorsement of the doctrine of White Supremacy,” and had nothing to do with religion, and thus violated the Due Process Clause of the 14th Amendment.

*The first Black U.S. Supreme Court justice, Thurgood Marshall, joined the Court four months after the Loving decision.

Ms. Smith is refusing to cater to White, Black, orange, green, purple, male, female, etc. people who participate in a 21st century anti-procreation, anti-woman, toxic feminist sex cult. It has nothing to do with race.

Further, she is a nondenominational Evangelical. Her Holy book clearly states, “If a man has sexual relations with a man as one does with a woman, both of them have done what is detestable. They are to be put to death; their blood will be on their own heads.” Leviticus 20:13.

Her beliefs are clearly grounded in Biblical texts. But liberals rely on emotional irrationality and belittling of religion, instead of utilizing reason, logic and the tolerance they frequently demand from others.

God wasn’t done winning. Another Supreme Court case last week may open the floodgates for lawsuits against employers who fired religious workers due to vaccine mandates.

Only legal way to deny religious exemptions from vaccine mandate is if company faces “substantial costs or expenditures”

COVID Legal USA™ received numerous emails this past weekend after the Supreme Court issued its unanimous ruling in the case of Groff vs. DeJoy. Most Americans are beyond their statutes of limitation to sue former employers at this point. But if you were fired in 2023 due to a vaccine mandate, and you requested a religious exemption, there is positive news.

Mr. Gerald Groff started working for the United States Postal Service (USPS) in 2012. USPS, historically, has never delivered on Sunday, except in rare circumstances. But the agency, at some point, started making deliveries for Amazon on Sundays.

Mr. Groff transferred to another route to avoid working on the Sunday Sabbath. But ultimately all routes started delivering on Sundays. He was disciplined several times for not showing up on Sundays, before being terminated. Mr. Groff sued the USPS under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

The district court sided with the USPS and the Third Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed. The latter relied on the 1977 case Trans World Airlines, Inc. v. Hardison to deny Mr. Groff relief based on a legal standard known as “de minimus cost” to the employer. But the Supreme Court, in Groff, raised the bar to a “substantial cost and expenditures” standard.

Under the de minimus standard, Rastafaris could be denied a religious exemption because their dredlocks made other workers uncomfortable. Same thing with Muslims, beards and hijabs. But those accommodations cost employers nothing as far as substantial money, expenditures or undue hardship under the higher standard.

The Court also made this powerful statement:

In other words, unless the employer is faced with a significant financial burden, they must accommodate religious exemption requests. This also signals that employers can no longer use fallacious Fauci-isms and fearmongering to force vaccine mandates in lieu of religious exemption requests.

The Supreme Court, in January 2022, also defined so-called COVID-19 as a “universal risk” and not a workplace risk. That, combined with all the foregoing, means non-healthcare workplace vaccine mandates are essentially over for most people who request religious accommodations.

The Court remanded Mr. Groff’s case back to the Third Circuit. Said court still may affirm its ruling in favor of the USPS based on the facts. Allowing a worker to take a certain day off every week at a 24/7 operation could be deemed an “undue hardship.” But that’s up to the Third Circuit and/or the district court.

Too little too late for most Americans

The Hill held its Future of Healthcare Summit in Washington, D.C. on June 22. Fauci emerged from his cave and appeared as one of the speakers. In perhaps his most pompous, arrogant diatribe ever, Fauci had the dirty nerve to accuse other people of “normalizing untruths” and “distorting reality.”

This guy has been paid untold million of dollars via U.S. taxpayers for 50 years to lie and spread big pharma propaganda. The following is two minutes of his lies and flip-flops since 2020.

RELATED: Move over cancer: mRNA injections are respawning HIV/AIDS around the globe, while numerous AIDS researchers are suddenly and mysteriously dying (February 28, 2022)

 

U.S. government, from federal to local townships, have been manipulating and lying to Americans for over three years. Executive orders, whether by governors or Presidents, are not laws, and never have been laws. The U.S. has a President and 50 governors, not kings and queens.

Workplace religious accommodations have been U.S. law since the 1960s. But mainstream media and government officials have mocked and belittled God, and distorted the reality of religious accommodation since the beginning of 2021. That spooked a lot of Christians, Muslims, etc. out of asserting their sincerely-held religious beliefs in the workplace in 2021 and 2022.

Last week’s decisions provided more guidance for Plaintiffs in religious exemption cases for vaccine mandates. But we still need to keep an eye on the Lowe vs. Mills case, decided in the First Circuit Court of Appeals, on May 25. The case involves Maine healthcare workers who were fired from their jobs for refusing the injections based on their sincerely-held religious beliefs.

The case is a bit convoluted on the surface. It would seem that Maine’s law allowing medical exemptions, but not religious exemptions from the injections, violates the First Amendment and should be struck down entirely. The Maine law also punishes healthcare facilities with threats of losing accreditation, licenses, etc. for allowing non-medical exemptions.

RELATED: New York state judge strikes down Governor Hochul mask mandate (January 25, 2022)

 

As it stands, the Third Circuit affirmed dismissal of the Plaintiffs’ Title VII claims because of “undue hardship” to the hospital, i.e. facing potential de-licensing or other punishments. But the Court reinstated the Plaintiffs’ 14th Amendment Equal Protection and First Amendment Free Exercise claims. The justices reasoned that allowing medical exemptions, but not religious exemptions, was similar to liquor stores being allowed to stay open, but churches had to close during lockdowns.

There are four different avenues to exemptions: the Americans with Disabilities Act (medical exemptions), Title VII, Free Exercise, and/or Equal Protection, depending on the circumstances. Theoretically the Maine statute outlawing religious exemptions could still be struck down on remand, and probably should be. Read the full Lowe vs. Mills decision here.

The coordinated lies and manipulation surrounding this entire plandemic have consistently been checked and redressed by the courts at the state and federal levels. The judiciary is the only branch of government that, at least as it relates to so-called COVID-19 and vaccines, is working like it’s supposed to work.

It’s the U.S. We’ll never agree on everything. But the courts and the Second Amendment are the only things that have (at least to this point) prevented the U.S. from becoming Australia or Canada, aka complete COVID dystopia. Once we lose the courts, it’s over. That alone is a good reason to get out and celebrate the Fourth of July.

Stay vigilant and protect your friends and loved ones.

 

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