Applying Mahmoud v. Taylor to vaccines is alarming

 On Monday, the Supreme Court sent a case challenging New York State's ending of religious exemptions for vaccines back to the appeals court " for further consideration in light of Mahmoud v. Taylor."

Mahmoud, of course, was the decision that allows parents to exempt their children from, well, basically anything in a school, on religious grounds. 

Slate covers the issue here well: 

Unfortunately, Mahmoud’s author, Justice Samuel Alito, wrote the opinion so sweepingly that this interpretation is entirely plausible. He evinced no concern for the rights of other students—like, say, the children of LGBTQ+ parents who might feel stigmatized by the removal of books that depict families like theirs. And he contemplated no clear limits to parents’ freedom “to direct the religious upbringing of their children.” Instead, he indicated that when parents’ faith-based demands conflict with democratically enacted education policies, it is the parents who must win out and the contested policies that must yield. So the Amish plaintiffs in Miller v. McDonald are not off base when they say that Mahmoud establishes their right to send their kids to school unvaccinated. Alito’s decision is so recklessly capacious that it arguably allows parents to challenge even the most basic school-safety measures on religious grounds.

Mahmoud did at least acknowledge that infringements upon this newfound First Amendment right may survive if they are “narrowly tailored” to serve a “compelling government interest.” The plaintiffs argue that the existence of New York’s medical exemption proves that there is no compelling interest in overturning its religious exemption, insisting that these opt-outs are analogous. But they are not: As the 2nd Circuit explained, there is “a difference in magnitude” between the frequency of religious and medical exemption, with families claiming the former vastly more often than the latter. Medical exemptions are also easier to police, since states can require licensed doctors to explain why each child has a legitimate need to forgo vaccination. Public health experts have shown that religious exemptions were linked to recent outbreaks—like New York’s measles epidemic—while medical exemptions were not.

In a week in which South Carolina reports what they've termed an "accelerating" measles outbreak  and Connecticut has just reported their first case in four years, it would certainly seem as if there is a compelling interest here. It is alarming that the Supreme Court would wonder otherwise.