In We the Patriots USA, Inc. v. Childs, (1st Cir., Nov. 3, 2026), the U.S. 1st Circuit Court of Appeals, in a 2-1 decision, refused to enjoin while an appeal is pending enforcement against plaintiffs of Maine's vaccination requirement for school children. Plaintiffs have religious objections to the requirement. The majority said in part:
It is not obvious that Yoder, Mahmoud, and Mirabelli govern the situation we face given that Maine's vaccination law does not appear to require a student's submission to school-facilitated instruction....
Relatedly, Yoder itself recognized that prior Supreme Court authority allows States to impose the kind of broad public health initiative that underlies this appeal....
Plaintiffs do not adequately demonstrate that the more recent authority on which they rely clearly shows that the Yoder line of cases applies to a vaccination requirement, especially where the ability of States to impose such a requirement is entrenched in other Supreme Court authority. At this stage of the appeal, plaintiffs have shown only that there is emerging law in this area. But showing the existence of emerging law that may be distinguishable is not enough to warrant the extraordinary relief of an injunction pending appeal.
Judge Dunlap filed a dissenting opinion, saying in part:
The Supreme Court has rejected narrow readings of its free exercise precedents on parental rights... which the district court here did by limiting strict scrutiny to instances in which a school directly inculcates values contrary to the parents' beliefs. Applying Yoder and its progeny, strict scrutiny applies because Childs' religious beliefs regarding vaccination and the upbringing of his children are sincere and substantially burdened by the vaccination requirement....
... There is no dispute that, because of the vaccination requirement, Childs' son has been deprived of the opportunity to attend public school. Absent a showing that the vaccine requirement survives strict scrutiny, this is a substantial and irreparable harm.... Because the State already permits certain students a grace period to vaccinate and because the vaccination requirement does not apply to certain students who previously invoked a religious objection, it does not appear that allowing Childs' son and the children of other WTP members (if any) in Maine to attend school for the short period of this appeal would cause significant harm.