Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor rejected an emergency appeal from New York City workers who lost their jobs due to Mayor Adams’ Covid vaccine mandate.
Firefighters, teachers, police officers and other city workers are still being discriminated against and their religious exemptions to the Covid vaccine are being rejected.
A group representing city workers filed an emergency appeal to the Supreme Court while the case makes its way through the lower courts.
Sotomayor rejected the emergency application on Thursday without comment.
Fox News reported:
Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor on Thursday rejected an appeal from New York City workers who are challenging the city’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate.
The workers include firefighters, teachers, police officers, sanitation workers and others who lost their jobs after the city rejected their request for a religious exemption to the COVID vaccine mandate. They filed an emergency application to Sotomayor requesting that the court temporarily stop the city from enforcing the vaccine mandate while the group challenges the city in a lower court.
Lawyers from the Alliance Defending Freedom, a civil rights law firm representing the workers, said in their filing that while they await a decision from the Second Circuit, their clients “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 told Fox News Digital at the time of the filing. “But for athletes, entertainers and strippers, the city found a way to loosen its mandate.”
“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,” the brief said.