NEW YORK (1010 WINS) – A group of St. John's University students have sued the school over its vaccine mandate, saying the requirement runs up against their opposition to abortion.
The 17 students filed suit against the school in state Supreme Court in Suffolk County and are seeking $2.75 million in damages if it isn't scrapped, according to the New York Post.
The students said the currently U.S.–approved COVID-19 vaccines—from Pfizer, Moderna and Johnson & Johnson—were tested by using "aborted fetal tissue or human embryonic stem-cell derivation."
While the school is granting some students exemptions for the mandate, in this case it has questioned "the genuineness of their purported religious beliefs."
Additionally, the Catholic Church has shown support for vaccinations, with the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops writing of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines in a guidance paper: "While neither vaccine is completely free from any use of abortion-derived cell lines, in these two cases the use is very remote from the initial evil of the abortion."
The bishops' group said abortion-derived cell lines were used "to test the efficacy of both vaccines" but weren't used in the "development or production of the vaccine."
As for the Johnson & Johnson vaccine—which the bishops' group didn't address in its paper—Reuters reports that the vaccine "used lab-replicated fetal cells" but that "the vaccine itself does not contain any fetal cells."
The St. John's mandate requires students to be vaccinated if they want to attend in-person classes, with some exemptions. The school said 98% of its 20,000 students have gotten at least one dose of a vaccine.
"St. John's University is confident our COVID-19 vaccination requirement, announced last April, will withstand this legal challenge," Brian Browne, a spokesperson for the school, told the Post. "Courts have consistently upheld student vaccination requirements as necessary to promote health and safety."
But a lawyer for the students, James Mermigis, told the Post that the school is "trampling on students' religious rights."
