Orthodox Jewish families have teamed up with a Roman Catholic in New York to file a federal lawsuit this week against New York Mayor Eric Adams over the city’s COVID-19 vaccine passport program.
A series of executive orders under former Mayor Bill de Blasio established the city’s “Key to NYC” policy, a seemingly innocuous name for a program that requires everyone five and older to show proof of vaccination before entering a wide variety of New York City establishments. The program does not allow for any medical or religious exemption, and imposes fines on anyone who violates the requirements, but makes exceptions for privileged groups such as professional athletes and pop stars.
“If you want to participate in our society fully, you’ve got to get vaccinated,” de Blasio said in August 2021, when he announced the policy.
When Adams was sworn in on January 1, he maintained that he would continue to uphold the policy.
According to the lawsuit, the city’s passport policy violates the First, Fifth, and 14th Amendments and represents an “unprecedented abuse of power.”
Christopher Ferrara, special counsel for the Thomas More Society, which is representing the plaintiffs, said the policy creates a “two-tiered society” in New York.
“Never in the history of this country, nor in the history of pandemics generally, has any government declared an entire class of citizens personae non gratae based on refusal to be vaccinated, much less with vaccines now known to be ineffective at preventing transmission of a communicable disease and to be unnecessary for children, who have an infinitesimal risk of death from COVID-19,” he said.
The suit also claims the restrictions applied to unvaccinated individuals are part of “a reckless, ill-conceived government policy that ignores sound medical science and the principle of informed consent to medical treatment.”
“Millions of the vaccinated are allowed to spread the virus,” the press release from the Thomas More Society reads, “but a few religious objectors to vaccination are virtually ghettoized. The only purpose of this tyrannical regime is vindictive punishment of the unvaccinated by depriving them of numerous aspects of social life.”
Ferrara added that the policy is based on the faulty claims that the vaccines will limit the spread of COVID-19.
“The vaccines don’t do it. The masks don’t do it. The lockdowns haven’t done it,” he said, adding that a recent Johns Hopkins University study backs him up.
The lawsuit represents 18 plaintiffs, three of whom are suing on behalf of their minor children, The Epoch Times reported. The plaintiffs state they refuse the vaccine based on religious reasons, citing the use of aborted fetal cells.
Another religious objection they cite claims that “submitting to a government dictate that conditions freedom on vaccination is a form of slavery and subjugation” that “violates numerous commandments in the Torah that require one to remember and internalize the great Exodus from slavery in ancient Egypt,” the Jewish Telegraphic Agency reported.
Ferrara told The Epoch Times that one of the plaintiffs escaped from tyranny only to be met by tyranny in New York.
“Ironically enough, one of the plaintiffs escaped from the Soviet Union, to come to the free United States and what he thought was the free state of New York and the free city of New York, only to be told when he was kicked out of the Javits Convention Center, ‘You can’t come in here unless you show your papers,’” Ferrara said.
According to The Epoch Times, the New York City Law Department continues to defend the vaccine program.
“Numerous courts have upheld the city’s various vaccine mandates, including the Key to NYC,” a spokesman said by e-mail.
“Vaccinations are key to getting us out of this pandemic and furthering the city’s recovery.”
Unfortunately, New York’s numerous vaccine mandates have enjoyed several court victories in the last several months.
“New York City’s program requiring proof of vaccination to enter restaurants, gyms and clubs can continue, a judge in Brooklyn ruled … rejecting a claim of racial bias,” Bloomberg Law reported in October. “A judge in Manhattan once again rejected the argument by a group of New York City teachers and other staff who are seeking exemptions for vaccination requirements for school staff on religious or medical grounds.”
Likewise, U.S. District Judge Ann M. Donnelly last month upheld New York City’s first-of-its kind private-sector mandate, according to Law360.com. Judge Donnelly claimed the plaintiff, Cornerstone Realty, did not meet the criteria for a temporary restraining order preventing the city from enforcing the policy.
But New Yorkers are not giving up. A Staten Island-based law firm, Fonte and Gelormino Legal Group, is currently working on forming a class-action lawsuit on behalf of any employee in the private sector or of a private school to fight the private-sector mandate.
