More than 30 years ago, the late Justice Antonin Scalia cautioned his colleagues that there would be claims for religious exemptions from vaccine mandates if the justices headed down the road that a number of them now seem ready to travel.

Scalia’s warning came in his 1990 majority opinion in the controversial, 6-3 decision in Employment Division v. Smith. The majority ruled that the First Amendment typically does not bar the application of a neutral, generally applicable law to religious-motivated actions.