LEGAL PUBLIC-INTEREST FIRM SEEKS SCOTUS REVIEW DENYING RELIGIOUS OBJECTIONS TO VACCINE MANDATES
by Sharon Rondeau
(Nov. 7, 2026) — On Friday, We the Patriots USA co-founder and vice president Brian Festa hosted a webinar to update the public on the organization’s religious-exemption lawsuits stemming from school vaccination mandates in five states.
Those states — Connecticut, New York, Maine, West Virginia, and California — are the only ones lacking a religious exemption from vaccines for schoolchildren based on their parents’ deeply-held religious beliefs.
While Connecticut, New York, Maine and California have laws which specifically repealed religious exemptions, West Virginia has no law for or against them. Early last year, West Virginia Governor Patrick Morrissey issued an executive order to the state health department directing it to establish a procedure to permit parents to request a religious vaccine exemption of they so chose.
However, the West Virginia Board of Education declined to recognize the executive order, after which litigation was brought by parents who had already been granted exemptions by the health department. As of this writing two consolidated cases will reportedly receive a hearing by the state’s highest court in the near future.
Maine
In “big news” on Election Day, Festa began the webinar, the First Circuit Court of Appeals denied WTPUSA’s motion for a temporary restraining order and preliminary injunction in a case regarding a father’s religious objection to vaccinations required by the Maine Department of Education for school attendance.
The father, James Childs, has not been able to send his son to school this year because of the state mandate which does not honor religious objections, although medical exemptions are permitted. In late September, WTPUSA appealed the district court’s ruling to the First Circuit.
A three-judge panel heard oral argument and on Tuesday issued a ruling against the plaintiffs 2-1.
The judges on the panel were Gustavo A. Gelpi, who has served on the First Circuit since 2021 and previously worked as an assistant attorney general during the last three years of the Clinton administration; Seth R. Aframe, who served at the U.S. attorney’s office for the District of New Hampshire between 2007 and 2024, when he was appointed to the First Circuit; and Joshua D. Dunlap, who was in private law practice in Portland, ME between 2009 and November 2025, when he was appointed to his current post.
The 2-1 denial, Festa said in the opening minutes of the broadcast, “sets up a showdown at the Supreme Court.”
WTPUSA attorneys are working on a petition to be filed at the high court, Festa said, “hopefully within the next couple of weeks.”
He then detailed the nation’s nine circuit courts and the states and circuits in which WTPUSA is litigating the denial of religious vaccine objections. The Maine case, he said, is “the big one.”
Connecticut
There are two cases arising in Connecticut, Festa explained, the “major” one being Milford Christian Church v. the commissioner of the Office of Early Childhood Education, Beth Bye.
A former state legislator, Bye began her commissioner tenure in 2019, retiring on October 1, 2025.
The case is currently stalled at the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, Festa said.
In early 2023, he provided as background, the State of Connecticut “had an inspector go in to their Little Eagles Daycare & Preschool…and was reviewing, auditing religious exemptions…They weren’t supposed to have any religious exemptions because, of course, the law repealed religious exemptions in 2021, but they were still honoring religious exemptions…”
The state presented the school “two options,” Festa said, which were to either expel all unvaccinated children or “force” all children to be vaccinated “within a very short amount of time.”
If one or the other of those options was not carried out, Festa said, the inspector told them, “We’re gonna shut you down.”
The church’s pastor contacted WTPUSA, Festa said, and “within days,” a federal lawsuit was filed. “We were able to negotiate with the state, the attorney general’s office, to keep that school open,” Festa said. “…so for all this time…that school has remained open and continues to honor and accept religious exemptions from parents…I don’t know of any other instances of a school being allowed to remain open and the state agreeing to it even after religious exemptions were abolished…We’re fighting for this to be permanent and for all the families in Connecticut to be able to use religious exemptions.”
The case was dismissed at the district level and appealed to the Second Circuit, Festa said, where oral argument took place on April 22 of this year. “We’re been waiting ever since,” he said.
“If we do not win at the Second Circuit, we will, of course, immediately appeal…to the U.S. Supreme Court” he added.
Watch the complete webinar here.
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