A suit raising 1st and 14th Amendment claims was filed this week in a New York federal district court by five Orthodox Jews (including a rabbi and a yeshiva teacher), and by a Catholic man, challenging New York City's "Key To NYC" program. Key To NYC requires individuals to be vaccinated for COVID in order to enter restaurants, entertainment venues and fitness facilities. Plaintiffs contend that they have religious objections to the COVID vaccine. Their religious objections are set out at length in the complaint (full text) in Jane Doe 1 v. Adams, (ED NY, filed 2/7/2022). Some of the religious objections are similar to those raised in many other cases, i.e. objections to vaccines developed with the the use of fetal cell lines originating from abortions. However, the religious objections cited by the Jewish plaintiffs include contentions that have not commonly been raised in past litigation. Here are two examples of the cited beliefs:
Submitting to a government dictate that conditions freedom on vaccination is a form of slavery and subjugation. This violates numerous commandments in the Torah that require one to remember and internalize the great Exodus from slavery in ancient Egypt....
Rabbi Moshe Schreiber, better known as the Chasam Sofer (1762 to 1839), an ancestor of John Doe 1’s wife and the leading Orthodox Rabbi in opposition to the Reform Judaism movement, stated the famous aphorism Chadash Assur Min Hatorah: That which is new is prohibited by the Torah. This was specifically aimed at the attempts to overhaul and change ancient traditions and customs, by the followers of Reform Judaism. The notion that healthy people should be viewed as sick until they can prove their innocence by vaccination in order to be part of society is a new concept that is being forced on humanity as part of the “New Normal” and “Great Reset.” This newfangled posture in human relations that is being imposed by force, has no basis in the Torah....
Thomas More Society issued a press release announcing the lawsuit.
