NEW YORK – US Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor has denied a request from New York City teachers to block the COVID-19 vaccination mandate.
The decision means that New York City’s roughly 148,000 school employees have until 5 p.m. (time that expired at the time of the Supreme Court announcement) to receive at least their first COVID-19 vaccine, or face suspension without pay when schools open on Monday.
But Mayor Bill de Blasio says the number of unvaccinated employees is shrinking: As of Friday morning, 90% of Department of Education employees, 93% of teachers, and 98% of principals had received at least one dose of a vaccine. For teachers in particular, that’s three percentage points more than last Monday.
The vaccination deadline had been pushed back from Monday to Friday after a back-and-forth legal battle between the city and a group of teachers who oppose the mandate, and it is still unclear whether the requirement will remain in effect at the end of the term. day because the anti-mandate group has petitioned the US Supreme Court for an emergency order blocking the implementation of the city’s vaccination mandate.
The petition asked Sotomayor, who is the circuit magistrate for this part of the country, to issue an emergency order blocking the mandate, which, they say, would force thousands of public school employees to lose their jobs if they remained in office. place.
Sotomayor’s last-minute decision on Friday came on his own, without referring the case to the full court.
“In attempting to combat the COVID-19 virus, the City of New York, the Department of Education, and the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene created an Executive Order that imposes an unconstitutional burden on public school teachers,” wrote attorneys for the teachers in their 12-page petition.
The state order would violate a teacher’s fundamental right to practice a profession, lawyers told the court, and teachers who do not receive the vaccine will never be able to return to work.
Mayor de Blasio said he was confident the courts would support the city’s efforts to exclude unvaccinated staff from school buildings, where they could infect coworkers or children too young to receive the vaccines.
The pre-term block had prompted the mayor to re-implement the weekly testing policy for staff who do not present proof of vaccination.
Following Friday’s decision, in a statement, Lou Gelormino, the Staten Island teachers’ attorney, said: “We are extremely disappointed with the decision of the United States Supreme Court. The voices of our teachers deserved to be heard. Vaccination mandates for adults have not been discussed in court in over a century. These unconstitutional edicts will continue across the country until our courts decide to hear our argument that the Government has gone too far. Our children are the ones who will suffer the most. Teachers who love our children so much will no longer be in the classroom. “
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