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Page Number: 8

8 

DR. A v. HOCHUL 

GORSUCH, J., dissenting 

law will not qualify as neutral if a religious exercise is the 
“object” of a law and not just “incidental[ly]” or unintention-
ally affected by it.  Smith, 494 U. S., at 878.  At “minimum,” 
that  means  a  law  must  not  “discriminate  on  its  face.” 
Lukumi, 508 U. S., at 533.  Apart from that, it also means 
that a law will not qualify as neutral if it is “specifically di-
rected at . . . religious practice.”  Smith, 494 U. S., at 878; 
see  also  Lukumi,  508  U. S.,  at  535.    For  reasons  we  have 
already seen, New York’s mandate fails this test too.  Ra-
ther than burden a religious exercise incidentally or unin-
tentionally, by the Governor’s own admission the State “in-
tentionally”  targeted  for  disfavor  those  whose  religious
beliefs  fail to  accord  with  the  teachings  of  “any  organized 
religion” and “everybody from the Pope on down.”  Even if 
one  were  to  read  the  State’s  actions  as  something  other
than  signs  of  animus,  they  leave  little  doubt  that  the  re-
vised  mandate  was  specifically  directed  at  the  applicants’ 
unorthodox religious beliefs and practices.

Consider general applicability next.  Recently, a majority 
of this Court reiterated that a law loses its claim to general 
applicability when it “prohibits religious conduct while per-
mitting secular conduct that undermines the government’s 
asserted  interests  in  a  similar  way.”  Fulton  v.  Philadel-
phia, 593 U. S. ___, ___ (2021) (slip op., at 6).  That is ex-
actly what New York’s regulation does:  It prohibits exemp-
tions for religious reasons while permitting exemptions for
medical reasons.  And, as the applicants point out, allowing 
a  healthcare  worker  to  remain  unvaccinated  undermines 
the  State’s  asserted  public  health  goals  equally  whether 
that worker happens to remain unvaccinated for religious 
reasons or medical ones.  See Does v. Mills, 595 U. S. ___ 
(2021) (GORSUCH, J., dissenting from denial of application 
for injunctive relief ). 

To be sure, the State speculates that a religious exemp-
tion  could  undermine  the  purpose  of  its  vaccine  mandate
differently from a medical exemption if more people were to