NY Judge Rules in Favor of Teachers Denied Religious Exemptions for COVID Shot

CV NEWS FEED // A New York State Supreme Court Judge Wednesday ruled in favor of ten teachers who were fired for not submitting to COVID-19 shots and were denied religious exemptions.

As FOX News reported, Judge Ralph J. Porzio “held that the city’s denials of religious accommodation to certain employees were unlawful, arbitrary and capricious” and that the New York City teachers “must be reinstated with back pay.”

“This Court sees no rational basis for not allowing unvaccinated classroom teachers in amongst an admitted population of primarily unvaccinated students,” stated Porzio in his opinion:

As such, the decision to summarily deny the classroom teachers amongst the Panel Petitioners based on an undue hardship, without any further evidence of individualized analysis, is arbitrary, capricious, and unreasonable. As such, each classroom teacher amongst the Panel Petitioners is entitled to a religious exemption from the Vaccine Mandate.

The decision was hailed as a major victory for medical freedom advocates. 

The teachers’ lead attorney, Sujata Gibson, called it a “watershed moment in the teachers’ two-year fight for relief,” adding: “The Court’s decision not only grants relief to these ten teachers, but it also sets important precedent for all other teachers denied religious accommodation.”

Michael Kane, one of the case’s petitioners and founder of the anti-mandate group Teachers for Choice, called the ruling “bittersweet.” 

“While it’s an important step in the right direction, justice for only 10 of us doesn’t even scratch the surface of the injustice suffered by NYC workers as a result of this illegal mandate,” said Kane.

Shortly before the ruling, Kane held a nondenominational prayer vigil outside the courthouse with the other teachers and supporters, per a Substack that covers news related to vaccine mandates in New York City.

“You don’t have all the answers, and you don’t know what the answers are going to be today,” he said to the assembled group:

But whatever Judge Porzio rules today, that does not define you. That does not define me. That does not define Teachers for Choice, nor any New Yorker, nor any American. This is one more event on the battle, on the journey, that we are all on to save America. To reunite America and to end the insanity, which we did end.

“We did end it,” he added. “They might want it to come back, but everybody being here is an example of how that’s not going to happen.”