NEW YORK, Sept. 28 (Usa): The nation’s largest school district could immediately impose a vaccine mandate on its teachers and other workers, after all, a federal appeals panel decided Monday, prompting teachers’ lawyers to say they would seek the United States. The Supreme Court to intervene.
The city’s Department of Education said the mandate will now go into effect at the end of Friday, so that all teachers and staff will be vaccinated by October 4, the following Monday.
The three-judge panel of the Second U.S. Court of Appeals in Manhattan issued a summary order late in the day that rescinded a block of a mandate that one appellate judge had placed Friday, the Associated Press reported.
After a dissenting ruling from a Brooklyn judge, a group of teachers referred the case to the Court of Appeals, which appointed a three-judge panel to hear oral arguments on Wednesday. But the Appeals Committee issued its order on Monday after written pleadings were submitted by both sides.
Attorney Mark Font, who brought the lawsuit on behalf of two teachers and others, said in a statement that he and attorney Luis Gilormeno immediately petition the Supreme Court to intervene.
“As of this moment, the authorization is in effect,” he said, adding that he and Guillermino were “dismayed and frustrated by this turn of events.”
Fonte added: “With thousands of teachers not vaccinated, the city may regret what it wishes for. Our children will not leave teachers and no security in schools.”
In its statement, the city’s Department of Education said, “Vaccinations are our most powerful tool in the fight against COVID-19 – this provision is on the right side of the law and will protect our students and staff.”
Mayor Bill de Blasio announced in August that about 148,000 school employees will have to receive at least their first dose of the COVID-19 vaccine by September 27. The policy covers teachers, along with other employees, such as bouncers and cafeteria workers.
The practical effect of the mandate was that teachers and other staff would not be able to work, starting Tuesday, if they failed to get vaccinated.
As of Monday, de Blasio said, 87% of all education department employees, including 90% of teachers, have been vaccinated.
But Michael Mulgrew, president of the United Teachers Union, said a survey of some of its members found that only a third believed their schools could open without interruption.
“The city has a lot of work to do to ensure that there are enough vaccinated employees available by the new deadline,” he said in a statement.
On Monday, teachers’ lawyers argued in papers submitted to the Second Circuit that teachers who were given unpaid leave because they did not comply with the order would be irreparably harmed if an appeals court failed to block the mandate.
The lawyers wrote that the city’s order “would leave teachers and paraprofessionals without the resources to pay rent, utilities, and other necessities. Damage is imminent.”
They said the mandate would leave thousands of New York City children in the nation’s largest school district without their teachers and other school staff.
The lawyers insisted that “there is imminent and irreparable damage”.
On Sunday, the city submitted written arguments to the Court of Appeals, saying that some teachers’ preference “not to be vaccinated while teaching at-risk schoolchildren dwindles to public interest in safely resuming school operations for the million public school students and ensuring that caregivers across the city” can Send their children to school safely knowing that proper safety protocols are in place.”
City attorneys said courts have long recognized that vaccination mandates do not subvert workers’ constitutional due process rights and have dismissed similar challenges for more than a century.
“Frankly, the plaintiffs do not have due process rights to educate children without vaccinating them against a serious infectious disease,” they wrote. “Managing vaccination is not just a rational public health measure, but a critical one.”
RAE