A federal judge granted a temporary restraining order Tuesday preventing New York from enforcing its COVID-19 vaccine mandate for health care workers, just days before the requirement is due to take effect.
Judge David Hurd's order comes in response to a lawsuit filed Monday by a group of 17 health care workers who sued Gov. Kathy Hochul and members of her administration for not allowing any exemptions for those who oppose getting the vaccine on religious grounds. The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of New York, argues the lack of religious exemption violates the First and Fourteenth Amendments of the Constitution. State Health Commissioner Dr. Howard Zucker and State Attorney General Letitia James are listed as co-defendants.
"A temporary restraining order is an order issued by a judge that will maintain the status quo until there's a fuller hearing on the issues that are presented in a case," Alicia Ouellette, dean and president of Albany Law School, told WNYC.
Former Gov. Andrew Cuomo issued the mandate as one of his final acts in office, and the deadline for hospital and nursing home employees across the state to get vaccinated against the coronavirus is coming up on September 27th. Hochul’s administration announced in late August that it would roll back any religious exemptions that had been granted previously in an effort to boost vaccination to combat the more contagious delta variant.
“We’re not constitutionally required to provide religious exemptions,” Vanessa Murphy, a state health department attorney, said at the time.
In a statement, Gov. Hochul’s press secretary, Hazel Crampton-Hays, said the judge’s order does not suspend the vaccine mandate but just temporarily bars the state health department from enforcing it in cases where people have claims for religious exemptions.
"So most health care workers will still need to get vaccinated no matter what happens in the federal case," Ouellette said. "The order is very limited. It makes an exemption only for health care workers who are seeking or who have received a religious exemption."
Crampton-Hays added the state is considering its legal options.
“Governor Hochul is doing everything in her power to protect New Yorkers and combat the delta variant by increasing vaccine rates across the State,” Crampton-Hays continued. “Requiring vaccination of health care workers is critical to this battle.”
According to the complaint, the plaintiffs—doctors, nurses, a therapist, a medical technologist and a physician liaison—are refusing to get vaccinated against the coronavirus because the vaccines were developed or tested using aborted fetal cell lines. These are cells replicated from aborted fetal tissue in a lab.
None of the authorized or approved COVID-19 vaccines contain aborted fetal tissue, nor has their production involved recently aborted fetuses. The production of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine relied on fetal cell lines that came from a fetus aborted in 1985. Pfizer and Moderna used fetal cell lines early in their testing process.
Despite this, some religious leaders have come out in favor of people getting vaccinated. Pope Francis said last month that it was “an act of love” that would “bring hope to end the pandemic,” and no major religions oppose the COVID-19 vaccines. But legal scholars told CBS that there could still be room for exemptions for people holding “sincere beliefs.”
"Even if the state were to lose the federal case, the vaccine mandate as a whole goes forward, and most health care workers need to be getting their shots," Ouellette said.
The lawsuit, brought by the pro-life law firm the Thomas More Society, alleges that the plaintiffs are being treated as “pariahs” for not getting the vaccine based on their sincerely held religious beliefs. They also risk losing their jobs.
“We are greatly dismayed by today’s decision by the Northern District of New York to permit, at least temporarily, religious exemptions to the state’s health care worker vaccination requirements,” Dr. Joseph Sellers, president of the Medical Society of the State of New York, said in a statement Tuesday. “We believe this step will result in a flurry of attempts to circumvent the well-reasoned vaccination requirement that was an important step towards reversing the recent surge attributable to the more easily spread delta variant.”
The temporary restraining order prevents the state from enforcing the vaccine mandate or interfering with any existing or future religious exemptions for vaccines while it’s in place. The state has to submit any documents opposing this preliminary injunction by September 22nd. Oral arguments in the case would then begin on September 28th, a day after the mandate is scheduled to take effect.
This story was updated with reactions from Gov. Hochul’s office, the Medical Society of the State of New York and the dean of Albany Law School.
