Mayor Bill de Blasio said he’s confident the city’s vaccine mandate for educators will stand despite a judge issuing a temporary restraining order against it on Tuesday.
Judge Laurence Love signed the order after the Municipal Labor Committee and other unions sued the city, arguing the vaccine mandates should allow for religious and medical exemptions as well as accommodations for unvaccinated school staff. A hearing is scheduled for September 22nd, and the judge will rule after that.
“It's a very temporary action to get to the court date, where the actual case will be heard,” de Blasio said at a press conference Wednesday morning. “We're employers. We have a right to keep our workforce safe and healthy.”
The city plans to require all municipal workers to get vaccinated or be tested weekly by September 13th. In August, the mayor announced an even tighter requirement for public school staff, saying educators would not have the option to take weekly tests instead of getting inoculated. The restraining order only applies directly to the mandate for educators, but the judge’s action could set a precedent for the other unions. The deadline for school staff to get their first dose is also September 27th. Now, educators who don’t want to get vaccinated can wait until the judge rules. According to new numbers from the city, 76% of school staffers have received their first dose.
The United Federation of Teachers is the school system’s largest union with approximately 130,000 members employed by the education department. It has already challenged the city over the issue of accommodations, and an arbitrator determined that there can be some very limited religious and medical exceptions. However, the list of medical conditions that qualify is very short, and requests for religious exemptions will be denied for any religions where leaders have encouraged vaccines, which is most religions.
Staff who qualify for these rare medical and religious exceptions can switch to assignments outside the classroom. Teachers who don’t qualify for these exemptions but still refuse to get vaccinated either have to take unpaid leave and can keep their health insurance, or they can resign and get severance.
De Blasio said he believes the mandates for both educators and the municipal workforce as a whole rest on firm legal ground. He noted that President Joe Biden has announced a similar requirement for the federal workforce and private companies with more than 100 employees.
“When you're talking about a commissioner’s order in the middle of a global pandemic and spaces like schools, and you're looking at everything that's been done from the president of the United states to the CDC, etc. ... we feel all those factors make very clear the correctness of our position,” de Blasio said at the Wednesday press conference.
The Biden mandate is also facing legal threats, including a new suit by Arizona’s attorney general.
Meanwhile, a federal judge has also placed a temporary restraining order on the state vaccine mandate for health care workers. A group of them had sued the state because it does not allow exceptions on religious grounds.
Alicia Oulette, President and Dean at Albany Law School, said she is not surprised by the legal challenges. “We knew that there were going to be lawsuits in these cases,” she said in an interview on WNYC Wednesday.
“The big issue of whether a vaccine mandate can be done legally is very well settled,” she said. “But there are issues around the edges, particularly around accommodations for religious beliefs and the interplay with union contracts that are unsettled. And those are the issues that the judges are going to be looking at more closely as they maintain the status quo.”
Amanda, who teaches second grade at a school in Bay Ridge, said she will likely get vaccinated if she is forced to choose between getting the shot and losing her job. But she said she’s waiting to see if the policy will be reversed. “It’s frustrating because we’re not given a choice,” said Amanda, who did not want to give her last name for fear of professional repercussions.
But many parents and educators applauded the decision to require educators to get vaccinated, saying the mandate made them feel safer about in-person school, although they criticized the lag between the start of school on September 13th and the rule going into effect on September 27th. For them, the temporary restraining order adds to their anxiety around students’ health and safety.
Ruthie Vishlitzky works for the city and sent her kindergartner off to public school this week. She says the challenge to the vaccine mandates makes her pessimistic about the safety of the schools and her workplace. “Everyone was already demoralized, scared and filled with dread about the environment and working conditions, and now the pillar that was supposed to keep us safe, the vaccination and testing mandate, [could be] removed,” she said. “It just feels scary and inevitable that we will have outbreaks.”
