A federal judge has blocked the state of New York from forcing medical workers to be vaccinated after a group of healthcare workers sued the state, including the governor, the health department, and others, claiming their constitutional rights were violated.
Judge David Hurd in Utica issued the order on Tuesday. Several litigants, including doctors and nurses, claimed their First Amendment rights were violated by a vaccine mandate, which does not allow for religious exemptions.
For the last seven weeks, New York radio talk show host Shannon Joy has been rallying the medical community in Rochester and huge groups of health professionals have been marching outside the University of Rochester Medical Center every week, speaking out against what they say is medical tyranny in the form of vaccine mandates.
Rochester, NY: 1,000 STRONG TODAY! #RallyForMedicalFreedom pic.twitter.com/QxAVq5WyA6
— Shannon Joy (@ShannonJoyRadio) September 13, 2021
According to the lawsuit, “The plaintiffs herein are medical professionals whose sincere religious beliefs compel them to refuse vaccination with the available COVID-19 vaccines, all of which employ aborted fetus cell lines in their testing, development, or production.”
The lawsuit also quoted the ACLU on forced vaccination in 2008 (before the group recently decided that forced vaccination is actually liberating):
No one should be forced to be vaccinated against their will both because of the constitutional right to refuse treatment, and pragmatically because forced vaccination will deter at least some people from seeking medical help when they need it.” “Following this flawed logic, several state-based proposals have sought to address any ‘public health emergency,’ … [by] resort[ing] to punitive, police-state tactics, such as forced examinations, vaccination and treatment, and criminal sanctions for those individuals who did not follow the rules.” -The American Civil Liberties Union in 2008
It also takes a big swing at disgraced former governor Andrew Cuomo.
On August 23, 2021, the People of the State of New York were definitively rescued from the nearly eighteen-month-long medical dictatorship of ex-Governor Cuomo, who resigned in disgrace and forfeited the Emmy Award for his press conference “performances” as the savior of New York from the coronavirus.
Ouch. That stings. But even better are the next few paragraphs outlining the idiotic response to COVID that New York has suffered, including the horrific deaths of nursing home residents, which did not have to happen.
The legacy of Cuomo’s medical dictatorship was the second highest COVID death rate per 100,000 in the country—with New Jersey in first place under the equally draconian and still-ongoing medical dictatorship of Governor Murphy. There is an ongoing FBI investigation into official concealment of the 15,000 COVID deaths caused by Cuomo’s order to return COVID-positive patients to nursing homes after their discharge from the hospital. On June 25, 2021, two months before his last day in office, Cuomo finally rescinded his declaration of a “State disaster emergency”—fifteen months after it was issued— along with all the executive orders that followed. There is no longer a public health emergency in the State of New York. Despite the incessant media fearmongering over the “Delta variant” and now the “Mu variant,” on September 7, 2021, only 47 deaths out of a state population of almost 20,000,000 could be attributed (however loosely) to the virus.
This lawsuit pulls no punches.
The end of the Cuomo administration, however, has apparently not been accompanied by any institutional awareness of the failure of his policies to improve the lot of New Yorkers during the pandemic as compared to virtually every other State in the Union. On the contrary, the defendant Health Commissioner, Howard A. Zucker, and Cuomo’s successor as Governor, defendant Governor Kathy Hochul (Hochul), continue to behave as if the “disaster emergency” had never ended—and never will end.
As a resident of New York, I can assure you this is true. Not only do they pretend we are still in a state of emergency, but the leadership here is also arresting moms for not masking, even when there is no mask mandate. The New York government is out of control.
For now, the checks and balances seem to be working, as a temporary restraining order has been issued against the state by the judiciary, the way our Founders intended.
“The DOH [Department of Health] is barred from enforcing any requirement that employers deny religious exemptions from COVID-19 vaccination or that they revoke any exemptions employers already granted before the vaccine mandate issued,” Judge Hurd wrote. The order goes on to bar the DOH from interfering in any way with religious exemptions or taking any disciplinary action against employees who refuse the vaccine until it is litigated in court.
It's great to see courts checking the power of the government even if it's temporary. #NYVaccineMandate #MedicalFreedom The mandate for medical professionals is BLOCKED by a federal judge. pic.twitter.com/SKNntnnCsm
— Megan Fox 🦊 (@MeganFoxWriter) September 15, 2021
The state of New York’s legislature already removed the religious exemption for vaccines for elementary and high school students in 2019. But adults in New York still have religious freedom, even if their kids don’t. The question now is, for how long?
Source: PJ Media
