UTICA, N.Y. (AP) -- A federal judge ruled Tuesday that New York must continue to allow health care workers to seek exemptions from a statewide vaccine mandate on religious grounds as a lawsuit challenging the requirement proceeds.
Judge David Hurd in Utica had issued a temporary restraining order a month ago after 17 doctors, nurses and other health professionals claimed in a lawsuit that their rights would be violated with a vaccine mandate that disallowed the exemptions.
Hurd's preliminary injunction Tuesday means New York will continue to be barred from enforcing any requirement that employers deny religious exemptions.
Hurd wrote that the health care workers challenging suing the state were likely to succeed on the merits of their constitutional claim.
The ruling was a relief for Paul Lockwood, the owner of the New Windsor Country Inn adult care facility in Orange County, who worried he'd have to fire half of his employees today.
"You know, I have to support my staff because they've been with me so long and they do become family," Lockwood told WCBS 880's Marla Diamond.
Lockwood said he'd already called some patients' families to let them know their loved ones might be transferred due to staffing shortages.
"We at least get some breathing room here, I don't see this as an end, but it's not easy to get employees at this point in time," Lockwood said.
New Windsor's Town Supervisor George Meyers is hoping the state health department can allow the nursing home to keep testing staff instead of mandating a vaccine.
"I think you can't just push people into a corner saying you've got to do this or else, give them an option. There are some people are very, very anti-vaccination," Meyers said.
Gov. Kathy Hochul's administration began requiring workers at hospitals and nursing homes to be vaccinated on Sept. 27 and more recently expanded the requirement to include workers at assisted living homes, hospice care, treatment centers and home health aides.
Hochul reacted to Tuesday's ruling in a statement saying, "My responsibility as Governor is to protect the people of this state, and requiring health care workers to get vaccinated accomplishes that. I stand behind this mandate, and I will fight this decision in court to keep New Yorkers safe."
The state has not provided information on the total number of health care workers who have sought religious exemptions.
The plaintiffs, all Christians, oppose as a matter of religious conviction any medical cooperation in abortion, including the use of vaccines linked to fetal cell lines in testing, development or production, according to court papers.
Several types of cell lines created decades ago using fetal tissue exist and are widely used in medical manufacturing, but the cells in them today are clones of the early cells, not the original tissue.
The COVID-19 vaccine from Johnson & Johnson is produced by using an adenovirus that is grown using retinal cells that trace to a fetus from 1985, according to the Vaccine Education Center at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia.
The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops said in a January statement that "abortion-derived'' cell lines were used to test the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines but not in their development or production.
Hurd also allowed the plaintiffs to keep their identities private by using pseudonyms such as "Dr. A.'' and "Nurse J.'' The plaintiffs said they wanted to proceed anonymously because they feared the risk of ostracization or retaliation.
WCBS 880's Marla Diamond contributed to this report.