November 10, 2021
About a hundred opponents of NYC’s vaccine mandate for municipal employees gathered this afternoon for a prayer vigil in Foley Square. Meanwhile, a three-judge panel of the 2nd US Circuit Court of Appeals was hearing arguments for a religious exemption from the required shot. A portable public address system broadcast the give and take live from the courtroom and an occasional cheer went up when a point went the activists’ way.
Michael Kane, Founder of Teachers for Choice, had organized the vigil and requested that no protest signs be displayed. It was his lawsuit that the judges and lawyers for him and the Department of Education were hearing. Kane’s request for a religious exemption was denied and his lawsuit claims the mandate is discriminatory. Several other City workers are also parties to this action.
Plaintiffs’ attorney Sujata Sidhu Gibson was on the phone with Kane right after the hearing ended and he put her on speaker so everyone could hear her say that she feels “very good about our case.” She was calling in from Ithaca, N.Y.
Next up was Mo Oliver, a 23 year veteran employee of the City’s school system representing Educators 4 Freedom, a group of DoE employees out on unpaid leave. He summarized how his life had brought him to this point and how his faith in God sustains him, especially now that he’s off payroll for refusing the COVID-19 vaccination. “We’re broke, but not broken.”
Nwakaego Nwaifejokwu, a 12 year veteran Special Ed teacher, said teaching isn’t just her job, it’s her passion. She isn’t doing it at the moment because she’s been placed on unpaid leave for failing to comply with the City’s vaccine mandate policy. She’s the sole support for her family and now they’re at risk of destitution, she explained. She doesn’t know how she’ll pay the rent. Nwakaego claimed that the City was chronically short staffed for Special Ed even before COVID-19 and the vaccine mandate has only made it worse.
The judges are expected to consider the arguments and then issue their ruling in the near future. While the vaccine mandate is unlikely to be thrown out completely, an accommodation for employees with a religious claim is one potential outcome. Compliance is in the 90%+ range already, so the impact of their ruling will be limited whichever way it goes at this point.
According to two sources today, DoE has denied several thousand such claims, about 1,400 have appealed, and close to 10% of those have been granted. Another couple of dozen are still pending. As many as 8,000 City employees have been placed on unpaid leave including 2-3000 at DoE as well as many FDNY firefighters. Meanwhile, NBC is reporting that only 2,600 are on unpaid leave but that 12,500 exemptions are pending.