Judge in New York Temporarily Halts State’s Covid-19 Vaccine Mandate

Healthcare workers in New York have been given a temporary reprieve from the state’s Covid-19 vaccine mandate. This decision comes after a group of 17 healthcare professionals sued the state of New York to enjoin the enforcement of its unconstitutional jab mandate.

On August 28th, the state issued its vaccine mandate requiring all healthcare workers in hospitals and care homes to get at least one dose of the vaccine by September 27th. This mandate does not recognise religious exemptions to vaccinations.

The 17 healthcare workers who sued the state believe that a lack of exemption attempts to nullify protections for sincere religious beliefs granted under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

The lawsuit states: “The same frontline healthcare workers hailed as heroes by the media for treating COVID patients before vaccines were available, including the plaintiffs herein, are now vilified by the same media as pariahs who must be excluded from society until they are vaccinated against their will.”

The lack of exemptions for this vaccine mandate contrasts the protections for religious beliefs the state of New York provided in its prior health order.

Attorney Christopher Ferrara, of the Thomas More Society, said: “What New York is attempting to do is slam shut an escape hatch from an unconstitutional vaccine mandate. They are doing this while, knowing that many people have sincere religious objections to vaccines that were tested, developed, or produced with cell lines derived from aborted children.”

Ferrara is representing the health workers in the federal case against the state, along with Thomas More Society Vice President and Senior Counsel Peter Breen, Senior Counsel Stephen Crampton, and Counsel Michael McHale.

New York has no right to nullify federal anti-discrimination law, Ferrara pointed out.

“This is a brazen power grab by people who think they can get away with anything,” the attorney said.

Along with citing violations to the Constitution, the lawsuit alleges that the lack of exemptions for people with sincerely held religious beliefs is also a violation of the New York State Human Rights Law and the New York City Human Rights Law.

The medical professionals involved in the lawsuit – including doctors, nurses, a medical technician and physician’s liaison – are now facing termination from employment, loss of hospital admitting privileges, and the destruction of their careers, unless they agree to be vaccinated with jabs that contradict their religious beliefs.

Attorney Ferrara said: “Never in the history of New York state, never in the history of the world, has a government sought to forcibly impose mass vaccination on an entire class of people under threat of immediate personal and professional destruction.

“This is just another example of how COVID regimes are completely out of control. The federal judiciary has a duty under the Constitution to put a straight jacket on this institutional insanity.”

Ferrara added that the healthcare workers suing the state are “not anti-vaxxers” despite what the “fake news” calls them. “They are in fact in favour of voluntary vaccination with informed consent, but they oppose jack-booted coercion by the state to take a vaccine their religion forbids them to take. This is America, not Red China,” Ferrara added.

The medical professionals filing the complaint are doing so under pseudonyms because of what Ferrara called, “the fear and loathing of the unvaccinated and the hysteria that surrounds vaccine mania.”

Judge David N. Hurd of the District Court for the Northern District of New York ruled in favour of the plaintiffs and issued an order temporarily blocking the state from enforcing its vaccine mandate.

Hurd then gave the state until Sept. 22nd to respond to the lawsuit in federal court. If the state opposes the request of the plaintiffs for a preliminary court order blocking the vaccine mandate, an oral hearing will be held on Sept. 28th to decide the matter.

Attorney Ferrara said: “Without court intervention, these health professionals face loss of occupation, professional status and employability anywhere in the state of New York.”

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