NEW YORK (WCBS 880) — A state Supreme Court judge lifted a temporary restraining order Wednesday allowing the city's vaccine mandate for public school teachers and staff to proceed.
"The court notes that petitioners are similarly unlikely to be able to establish an irreparable harm as the loss of employment is compensable by money damages and reinstatement to said employment and will be similarly unable to prevail in a balancing of the equities as the health interests of the general public far outweigh petitioners' interests," Judge Laurence L. Love said in his ruiling.
Laurence's decision will allow the mandate ordering public school teachers and staff to have their first vaccine dose by Monday to proceed.
Love previously signed the injunction allowing the city's DOE ban to take effect.
Despite opposition by the NYC teachers union for a DOE mandate and ahead of Love's ruling, Mayor Bill de Blasio said Wednesday during his daily news conference that he was confident the mandate — also set for Monday — would still go into effect.
"Everyone understands how important it is," he said. "And this is how we keep our schools right for our kids.”
“We are deeply disappointed that the temporary injunction has been lifted," said Henry Garrido, executive director of District Council 37, NYC's largest municipal employees union. "This is not the end of the road and we will continue to fight for the right of workers to make their own healthcare decisions."
Garrido said forcing employees to get vaccinated is "not the answer," with the vast majority vaccinated.
"The schools should implement weekly testing if they truly want to keep everyone safe,” he said in a statement.
However, another federal judge extended the temporary restraining order blocking New York state from enforcing its vaccine mandate on state health care workers.
Judge David Hurd's extension to Oct. 12 comes more than a week after he blocked the state Health Department from enforcing its mandate on Sept. 14.
A lawsuit by 17 health professionals argued that their constitutional rights were violated.
Hurd took issue with the state's removal of the religious exemption and said in his original injunction that the state DOH is also "barred from taking any action, disciplinary or otherwise, against the licensure, certification, residency, admitting privileges or other professional status or qualification ... of their seeking or having obtained a religious exemption from mandatory COVID-19 vaccine."
The state agency voted unanimously on Sept. 1 to eliminate the religious exemption.
WETM reports Hurd's decision does not say whether the original mandate requiring state health care workers to receive their first vaccine dose by Sept. 27 still stands.
“Health care workers could still get medical exemptions, but not religious exemptions," said Melanie Franco, an attorney at Tully Rinckey in Albany. "The corrects of their argument are that it goes against not only the constitution but also the New York State Human Rights Law."
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