Siding with health care workers’ lawsuit claiming their Constitutional rights were violated, New York federal court placed temporary block on state’s vaccine mandate for medical workers, Fox News reports.
The State of New York issued an order on August 28 requiring all health care workers at hospitals and nursing homes to get at least the first shot by September 27.
Federal judge David Hurd in Utica ruled that New York State cannot force medical workers to get vaccinated after their lawsuit claimed their Constitutional rights were violated because the state’s mandate disallowed religious exemptions.
The lawsuit was filed Monday by 17 health professionals, including doctors and nurses, from the Thomas More Society.
The all Christians- plaintiffs, including practicing doctors, nurses, a nuclear medicine technologist and cognitive rehabilitation therapist, oppose as a matter of religious conviction any medical cooperation in abortion, the lawsuit said.
Stressing that they are not anti-vaxxers who oppose all vaccines, they further noted Covid vaccines are not morally acceptable since all of the available jabs employ aborted fetus cell lines in their testing, development or production.
Since the state Department of Health regulation requiring workers to get the vaccine provides no exemption for religious beliefs that compel the refusal of such vaccination, the health care professionals cited in their lawsuit it violates their rights given by the US Constitution and the Human Rights Laws of New York State and New York City.
New York State has until September 22 to respond to the lawsuit in federal court in Utica, but an oral hearing will occur September 28 if the state opposes the court order.
Arguing the vaccine mandate for health care workers is critical to the battle against Covid-19 pandemics, New York Democrat Gov. Kathy Hochul’s press secretary Hazel Crampton-Hays said the state was considering all legal options.
The idea behind Governor Hochul’s proposed mandate is to protect New Yorkers and combat the Delta variant of the coronavirus by increasing vaccine rates across the State.
The Medical Society of the State of New York’s president Dr. Joseph R. Sellers is sure that the federal judge’s decision will result in a wave of attempts to circumvent the well-reasoned vaccination mandate.
Greatly dismayed by judge’s decision, the nonprofit organization for physicians, residents and medical students believes that vaccination is an important step towards reversing the recent surge of cases fue to the more easily spread Delta variant.
They underlined in the statement that no major religious denomination opposes vaccinations, stressing that Supreme Court has upheld vaccination mandates as a means to protect the public health for over a century.
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