On Thursday, New York City workers fighting the city’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate asked Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor to temporarily halt the mandate’s enforcement while they awaited the outcome of a lower court’s ruling on whether the mandate violated their rights on religious grounds.
John Bursch, the workers’ attorney, reportedly said the following to Fox News: “We’re disappointed that Justice Sotomayor is willing to allow NYC’s rampant religious discrimination to continue.”
Numerous frontline employees, including police, teachers, sanitation workers, and firefighters, asked for religious exemptions from NYC’s COVID requirement. After that, many of them were let go for disobeying.
Folks, it is impossible for me to believe that New Yorkers reelected the people who put this mandate in place and are keeping it in place. And for New York officials to deny religious exemptions is a violation of their First Amendment rights. Being a heathen atheist does not mean that you have the right to violate the US Constitution, let alone the very First Amendment in the Bill of Rights. You don’t have to like that people believe in God or that people have a First Amendment right of religion. But at the same time, you don’t have the right to deny people their religious rights. Not in this country.
In a Supreme Court filing last week, the group—represented by attorneys from the Alliance Defending Freedom—argued that the city had restricted their ability to freely practice “their faith” by making them choose between getting the vaccination or losing their jobs. In order to give their case time to be heard by the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, which could take months, they asked Sotomayor to temporarily halt the mandate, which they oppose out of “sincere religious beliefs.”
Sotomayor rejected the request and made no further remarks.
VISIT OUR YOUTUBE CHANNELBursch said the workers “are suffering the loss of First Amendment rights, are facing deadlines to move out of homes in foreclosure or with past-due rents, are suffering health problems due to loss of their city health insurance and the stress of having no regular income, and resorting to food stamps and Medicaid just to keep their families afloat.”
“As we write in our emergency application for stay, these city heroes have dedicated their lives to serving their neighbors and keeping their city running safely and efficiently, yet New York City officials suspended and fired them because they cannot take the COVID-19 vaccine without violating their sincere religious beliefs,” Bursch added.
The brief filed by Bursch said, “The city never justified why an unvaccinated stripper can spend hours in close proximity to customers in an indoor venue, while a city sanitation worker cannot pick up refuse, outside, with virtually no person-to-person contact absent a vaccination that violates his religious convictions.”
