Whether a mandate that does not exempt religious conduct is neutral and generally applicable if it exempts secular conduct that similarly frustrates the specific interest the mandate advances

QUESTIONS PRESENTED Concerned about falling vaccination rates in its schools, Connecticut repealed its 62-year-old religious exemption to its school vaccination requirement in 2021. It expanded its longstanding medical exemption and created “legacy” exemptions allowing children who had obtained a religious exemption prior to the repeal to remain unvaccinated for the remainder of their primary and secondary educations. Connecticut’s revised school vaccination mandate excludes non-legacy children who are religiously commanded not to receive required vaccinations from attending public, private, and religious daycares, preschools, and K-12 schools. Applying rational-basis review after holding that Connecticut’s vaccination mandate is neutral and generally applicable, the Second Circuit affirmed the district court’s dismissal of the Petitioners’ free exercise claims under Employment Division v. Smith. The questions presented are: 1. Whether, as four circuits have held, a mandate that does not exempt religious conduct is not neutral and generally applicable if it exempts secular conduct that similarly frustrates the specific interest the mandate advances, or whether, as two circuits have held, such a mandate is neutral and generally applicable if the secular exemption advances a different (or more general) state interest that the religious conduct does not? u 2. Whether a law that provides for legacy religious exemptions valid for the entirety of each legacy child’s remaining K-12 education, but affords no religious exemptions to non-legacy children, is neutral and generally applicable? 3. Whether Employment Division v. Smith’s hybridrights exception should be revitalized, or whether Smith should be overruled?