A federal appeals court issued another temporary stop on the city’s vaccination mandate for Department of Education employees Friday, three days before the deadline for all DOE employees to show proof of vaccination or leave their jobs.
The temporary injunction is the latest volley in the legal wrangling over Mayor Bill de Blasio’s announcement last month ordering DOE employees to abide by the city’s strictest COVID-19 vaccination policy, in his efforts to keep the city's 1,800 public schools open for in-person learning.
The injunction, issued by Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit Judge Joseph Bianco Friday evening, will only stay in place until a three-judge panel rules on an appeal of a previous ruling.
That ruling, issued Wednesday by New York State Supreme Court Judge Laurence Love, lifted a previous temporary restraining order on the mandate. Love said he hopes to rule on the broader validity of the vaccine mandate for educators early next week.
In a memo sent to DOE staff Saturday morning, Chancellor Meisha Porter said she expects the ultimate ruling to be in their favor.
“We are confident our vaccine mandate will continue to be upheld; our students and school communities deserve no less,” Porter said. “While this means that the current vaccine or weekly testing mandate remains in place for the week of September 27 for all staff, principals and their school communities should continue to prepare for the possibility that the vaccine mandate will go into effect later in the week.”
“Staff who have not yet received a vaccine should continue to work towards compliance in anticipation of the mandate being reinstated as early as the end of the week,” she added.
The injunction comes after a group of DOE employees filed a suit earlier this month to block the vaccination mandate, according to the Staten Island Advance.
On Friday, the New York City teacher and principal unions held a press conference pushing back against the deadline, saying the mandate could lead to a potential staffing crisis next week with thousands of unvaccinated teachers and staff leaving.
The city said more than 82% of all DOE employees have received at least one dose of the vaccine as of Saturday, including 88% of teachers and 95% of principals. But the head of Local 237 representing several non-teaching school positions including school safety agents and food service managers estimated about half of their union membership has not been vaccinated, raising questions about understaffing in critical positions next week.
De Blasio has said there will only be rare exceptions for medical and religious reasons, and the DOE said Friday about 530 DOE employees have been granted exemptions so far as applications continue to be reviewed.
While De Blasio said earlier this week that the religious exemptions would be limited to “two well-established religions, Christian Science and Jehovah’s Witnesses” that historically opposed vaccinations, the Jehovah’s Witnesses sent out a statement Saturday saying the mayor “misstated the clear stand” of their faith on vaccinations.
“Jehovah’s Witnesses are not opposed to vaccination. We view vaccination as a personal decision for each Christian to make. Thus far 4,902 (99%) of the 4,926 at the offices of Jehovah’s Witnesses in New York State are fully vaccinated,” the statement said. “Jehovah’s Witnesses who choose to get vaccinated view their decision to be consistent with their ‘love of neighbor’ and their belief in the sanctity of life, two bedrock Christian principles.”
Meanwhile, the DOE's new revised testing and quarantine protocols for the city’s public schools will still go into effect Monday, with more frequent testing of unvaccinated students and updated quarantine policies for students exposed to COVID cases in classrooms.
With reporting from Jessica Gould
