In We the Patriots USA, Inc. v. Makin, (D ME, Sept. 8, 2026), a Maine federal district court rejected free exercise and Establishment Clause challenges to Maine's compulsory vaccination law for school children. Plaintiff contended that Maine's removal of religious exemptions from the law render it unconstitutional. The court said in part:
Plaintiffs argue 20-A M.R.S. § 6355 is neither neutral nor generally applicable and, separately, that even if it is neutral and generally applicable, it substantially interferes with Mr. Childs’s right to direct his son’s religious upbringing ....
... [W]hen the Maine Legislature repealed the religious and philosophical beliefs exemption in 2019, it repealed all personal belief exemptions, “and thus did not single out religion alone.” ... Neither the Legislature’s choice to eliminate certain exemptions, nor the process by which it did so, demonstrates hostility to religion....
... [T]he medical exemption serves rather than undermines Maine’s interest in health and safety. ...
Second, the medical exemption is bounded in a way a religious exemption is not. It rests on an individualized, evidence-based judgment from a licensed provider—subject to professional discipline—and statewide medical exemption rates have stayed below 1.5% in every surveyed grade cohort since 2018....
... [B]ecause Plaintiffs have identified neither a comparable secular activity treated more favorably than religious conduct nor a mechanism for individualized exemptions, Plaintiffs have not demonstrated a likelihood of success on their claim that § 6355 is not generally applicable. ...
Mr. Childs ... argue[s] that § 6355 burdens his right to direct his son’s religious upbringing because compliance would require him to authorize a vaccination he considers an act of sin, thereby undermining his ability to instruct his son in their shared faith and its demands.... On this record, the Court finds that Mr. Childs holds this belief sincerely. Even so, Plaintiffs have not shown that the burden Mr. Childs describes shares the same character of the burden Yoder, Mahmoud, and Mirabelli address. Those cases do not measure a burden by how heavily it presses on the parent who bears it. They measure whether the State has stepped into the relationship between parent and child to compete for the child’s own beliefs. In each case, the challenged practice reached the child directly, through the school itself, by exposing the child to—or facilitating—values contrary to those the parents sought to instill.....
