Accommodating Religious Objections to Vaccination Mandates-Implications of Groff v DeJoy for Health Care Employers.

This JAMA Forum discusses Title VII challenges to vaccination mandates, the Groff v DeJoy decision, and the implications of the decision for health care employers.

Holding Clinicians in Public Office Accountable to Professional Standards.

Clinicians using governing authority to make public health policy are ethically obliged to draw upon scientific and clinical information that accords with professional standards. Just as the First Amendment does not protect clinicians who provide advice that fails to express standard care, so it does not protect clinician-officials who offer information to the public that a reasonable official would not provide.

Judicial Review of Public Health Powers Since the Start of the COVID-19 Pandemic: Trends and Implications.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, officials in the United States at all levels of government utilized their legal authorities to impose a wide range of measures designed to control the spread of SARS-CoV-2 (severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2; the causative agent of COVID-19), including shutting down businesses, limiting the size of gatherings, requiring masking, and mandating vaccination. These orders and regulations were challenged in court cases that resulted in more than 1000 judicial decisions. Common claims were based on alleged procedural and substantive due process violations, violations of religious liberty, and violations of officials' scope of authority. In more than three fourths of the decisions, the court refused to grant the plaintiffs the relief sought. However, plaintiffs found success in several notable cases, especially in federal court. These recent decisions, as well as broader prepandemic trends, have important implications for public health officials' exercise of their public health powers, especially when those exercises implicate religious liberty. In this legal environment, officials may need to rely more on the powers of persuasion than on their legal authority alone. (Am J Public Health. 2023;113(3):280-287. https://doi.org/10.2105/10.2105/AJPH.2022.307181).

From the Shadows: The Public Health Implications of the Supreme Court's COVID-Free Exercise Cases.

This article analyzes the Supreme Court's "shadow docket" Free Exercise cases relating to COVID-19. The paper highlights the decline of deference, the impact of exemptions, and the implications of the new doctrine for vaccine and other public health laws.

Public Health Law and Policy Implications: Justice Kavanaugh.

Following the confirmation of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh in one of the most sensational jurisprudence events of the modern era, we examine potential repercussions across multiple themes in public health, law, and policy stemming from his ideology and the confirmation process.