An aerial view of City Hall and the downtown district of Lowell, Massachusetts, is shown. One student at the University of Massachusetts at Lowell, Hunter Harris, and a student at the University of Massachusetts at Boston sued the state-college system when their appeal for a religious exemption to the COVID-19 vaccination was denied.

Lawyers representing the Bay State have backed the official’s stance that Catholics can’t claim conscience exemptions, based on his own ‘holistic’ assessment of Church teaching on the issue.