Credit: Kris Craig/The Providence Journal / USA TODAY NETWORK
Syndication: The Providence Journal
NEW YORK (77WABC) — Teachers opposing New York City’s vaccination mandate are appealing to the U.S. Supreme Court in a last-ditch attempt to stop Friday’s vaccination deadline.
In a petition to Justice Sonia Sotomayor, four plaintiffs argue for an emergency injunction that would block the city from removing unvaccinated teachers from schools at the end of Friday.
NEW: New York City schoolteachers have filed an emergency request asking SCOTUS to block the city's vaccine mandate for public school employees. Lower courts declined to block the policy. The filing is here: https://t.co/JbqNXZO60h pic.twitter.com/rurxE7WVQ1
— SCOTUSblog (@SCOTUSblog) September 30, 2021
“As of September 23, 2021, only 80% of the DOE’s 148,000 employees had uploaded proof of vaccination, meaning that the August 23 Order will bar as many as 10,000 public school teachers from the classrooms,” the petition says. “This Court should grant the injunction after nearly two years of lockdowns, to prevent the largest public-school system in the country from further disrupting the education of hundreds of thousands of students who desperately need in-person teachers.”
According to officials, educators who do not have religious or medical exemptions and decline the shot will be put on unpaid leave with health insurance or leave the DOE with severance pay. Mayor de Blasio has argued that the mandate will safeguard against coronavirus outbreaks in the nation’s largest school system.
