United States of America, United States District Court, 11 May 2022, Steven Church et al. vs. Joseph R Biden et al.

The Court analyzed the arguments of the plaintiffs and defendants and reasoned that: 

1. According to the Plaintiffs, mandatory vaccination against Covid-19 "burdened" their right to freely exercise their religion in violation of the First Amendment and RFRA by requiring them to choose (a) to be vaccinated in contravention of their "sincerely held religious beliefs"; or (b) to be terminated from their jobs. But this argument hinged on "contingent future events that may not occur as anticipated, or indeed may not occur at all." As the Federal Employee Plaintiffs' exemption requests were still pending, they were not required to be vaccinated and they were not "subject to discipline." Moreover, the Court stated that in the event their exemption requests were ultimately approved, they would not have to be vaccinated against Covid-19, meaning the injuries alleged in the case under consideration might never occur.
2. The Federal Employee Plaintiffs relied upon the recent decision by the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas, which granted a preliminary injunction against enforcement of Executive Order 14043, in support of their argument that their claims were ripe for judicial review. In that case, the Court rejected the government's argument that federal employee plaintiffs "who ha[d] not claimed exemptions" did not have ripe claims because, according to the Court, "at least some" of those plaintiffs "face an inevitable firing.” The Federal Employee Plaintiffs here contended that they too faced an "imminent" harm sufficient to demonstrate ripe claims, however, certain plaintiffs in the Feds For Medical Freedom case elected to forego vaccination without ever seeking a religious accommodation—and therefore never had such exception requests pending. Therefore, they were in a position different from the plaintiffs here, who did not face discipline or termination for failing to comply with Executive Order 14043 while their accommodation requests remained pending.
3. In sum, the Court reasoned that the Federal Employee Plaintiffs' alleged injury of being "forced" to choose between their jobs and their religion rested on hypothetical predictions about the outcomes of their exemption requests and that the "mere potential" for future injury was insufficient to "render an issue ripe for review." Therefore, the Federal Employee Plaintiffs failed to demonstrate that the alleged deprivation of their right to freely exercise their religion was "imminent" or "certainly impending," and so they did not establish a ripe justiciable controversy.
4. Finally, the Court agreed with the Defendants that the Court lacked jurisdiction over the Federal Employee Plaintiffs' claims because they were neither constitutionally nor prudentially ripe. The Court thus had to dismiss the Federal Employee Plaintiffs' claims for lack of jurisdiction. “Ripeness is a justiciability doctrine designed ‘to prevent the courts, through avoidance of premature adjudication, from entangling themselves in abstract disagreements over administrative policies, and also to protect the agencies from judicial interference until an administrative decision has been formalized and its effects felt in a concrete way by the challenging parties.'” Nat'l Park Hospitality Ass'n v. Dep't of Interior, 538 U.S. 803, 807-08 (2003) (quoting Abbott Laboratories v. Gardner, 387 U.S. 136, 148-149 (1967)). The ripeness doctrine “generally deals with when a federal court can or should decide a case.” Am. Petrol. Inst. v. EPA, 683 F.3d 382, 386 (D.C. Cir. 2012). Part of the ripeness doctrine is also “subsumed into the Article III requirement of standing, which requires a petitioner to allege inter alia an injury-in-fact that is ‘imminent' or ‘certainly impending.'” Id. (citing Nat'l Treasury Emps. Union v. United States, 101 F.3d 1423, 1427-28 (D.C. Cir. 1996)). For a claim to be ripe under Article III, the plaintiff “must establish constitutional minima akin to that of standing by showing an injury-in-fact; allegations of possible future injury do not satisfy this requirement.” Finca Santa Elena, Inc. v. U.S. Army Corps of Eng'rs, 873 F.Supp.2d 363, 368 (D.D.C. 2012) (citing Wyo. Outdoor Council v. U.S. Forest Serv., 165 F.3d 43, 48 (D.C. Cir. 1999)). In other words, a case is not “constitutionally” ripe when it is “dependent on ‘contingent future events that may not occur as anticipated, or indeed may not occur at all.'” Trump v. New York, 141 S.Ct. 530, 535 (2020) (quoting Texas v. United States, 523 U.S. 296, 300 (1998)).