As previously reported, earlier this month a Maine federal district court rejected free exercise and Establishment Clause challenges to Maine’s compulsory vaccination law for school children (20-A M.R.S. § 6355). The next day, plaintiffs filed a motion asking for an injunction barring enforcement of the compulsory vaccination law pending appeal. In We the Patriots USA, Inc. v. Makin, (D ME, Sept., 22, 2026, the court denied the motion, saying in part:
Plaintiffs first argue the Court erred by assessing the “character” of the burden § 6355 imposes rather than its “degree.”… Plaintiffs essentially argue the Order rested on a “distinction between the kind of burden and its degree” that is not recognized by the relevant Supreme Court case law…. Plaintiffs assert that, absent this error, the Court should have applied a strict scrutiny analysis to § 6355, which they contend would not have survived that standard….
As this Court’s prior Order recognized, Yoder, Mahmoud, and Mirabelli each involved a school itself acting directly toward a child to compete with the parents for the child’s own beliefs—conduct that § 6355 does not involve…. Further, the character of the burden on Mr. Childs’ sincere religious beliefs is not of the kind contemplated in the Yoder line of cases….
… The Order … applied the standard Tandon and Fulton prescribe: it identified Maine’s asserted interest in the vaccine mandate and asked whether each exemption undermines that interest to the same degree a religious exemption would…. Plaintiffs’ motion does not identify any exemption the Order failed to analyze under that standard….