Frank Mora v. New York State Unified Court System, et al.

Petitioner Frank Mora is one of two City Court Judges in Poughkeepsie, New York. When his employer, the New York State Unified Court System, adopted a COVID-19 vaccination mandate, he sought a religious exemption, submitting a sworn statement of his Catholic religious objections to vaccination. The State’s Vaccine Exemption Committee denied the exemption on the ground that his “submitted statements do not articulate a consistent reason for why he refused some medical treatments, such as vaccines and immunizations, and not other types” — while, on Petitioner’s allegations, granting exemptions to hundreds of other employees, including Catholics whose applications invoked “the same doctrinal basis.” The Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit affirmed dismissal of all claims at the pleading stage, holding among other things that Petitioner, as an appointed city judge, is categorically excluded from Title VII’s definition of “employee” as “an appointee on the policy making level,” 42 U.S.C. § 2000e(f). The questions presented are: 1. Whether an appointed municipal judge is categorically “an appointee on the policy making level” excluded from the protections of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, 42 U.S.C. § 2000e(f ), or whether that exclusion instead requires a functional inquiry — whether the appointee works closely with and is accountable to the appointing elected official — that this Court’s and the courts of appeals’ decisions otherwise apply to it. 2. Whether a state employer violates the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment when it denies a religious exemption on the ground that the applicant’s sworn religious beliefs are insufficiently internally “consistent,” based on the State’s own evaluation of the applicant’s theological distinction between preventive vaccination of a healthy body and medical treatment of a body in crisis.