Sotomayor Upholds New York City Educator Vaccine Mandate

A bid by a group of teachers and administrators to block New York City’s Covid-19 vaccine mandate for education workers was rejected Thursday by Justice Sonia Sotomayor.

The educators argued that the mandate violated their religious rights because it didn’t include an exception for sincerely held religious beliefs.

Sotomayor, who fields emergency requests from the New York-based US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, acted on her own, without referring the matter to the full court. That’s typical when it’s unlikely that any other justice would have granted the request.

The justices in June turned away a similar challenge ...