- The U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear a lawsuit from NYC educators over vaccine mandate religious exemptions.
- The teachers argued the city ran a discriminatory two-track exemption system favoring certain religions.
- Thousands of employees were terminated after having their sincere religious exemption requests denied.
- The plaintiffs call the outcome devastating but vow to continue their legal fight in other courts.
- A parallel state case has already provided some relief for the affected educators.
The highest court in the land has turned its back on a fundamental question of religious liberty, leaving thousands of New York City educators who lost their jobs over a vaccine mandate searching for justice elsewhere. This week, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear Kane v. City of New York, a lawsuit brought by public school teachers and staff who argued the city’s process for granting religious exemptions from the COVID-19 shot was blatantly discriminatory. The decision lets stand lower court rulings that favored the city, marking a procedural setback for the plaintiffs but not the end of their legal war.
For lead plaintiff Michael Kane, a former special education teacher, the news was a blow. "This is completely devastating to me and to my community," Kane said. He is now the director of advocacy for Children’s Health Defense, which funded the lawsuit. Despite the setback, Kane said the plaintiffs are not backing down. "We are regrouping. Our end goal is to set a precedent that this can never happen again. You cannot have religious exemptions that are fake and inaccessible."
A system of denominational favoritism
The case exposed what attorneys called a "two-track system" for religious liberty. The conflict began in August 2021 when then-Mayor Bill de Blasio announced a vaccine mandate for all city employees. The city created a religious exemption but applied it in a shockingly unequal manner. As lead attorney John Bursch explained, the case raised the question of "whether the government can play denominational favorites when granting religious exemptions."
According to the plaintiffs, New York City granted automatic exemptions to members of "recognized" religions like Christian Scientists, whose leaders publicly opposed vaccination. Meanwhile, educators from faiths like Catholicism and Buddhism, or those with personal religious convictions, faced a nearly impossible bar. "Catholics were literally told that though they had sincere beliefs, they could not be accommodated as their Christian Scientists colleagues were," said attorney Sujata Gibson, who initially filed the suit.
The human cost of discrimination
The consequences were severe. The city initially denied all exemption requests, then granted only a tiny fraction on appeal. Thousands of employees were placed on unpaid leave and later terminated. "Problem" codes were attached to their permanent employment records, creating hurdles to future work. The city’s offer of reinstatement under current Mayor Eric Adams came only after the mandate was lifted and notably excluded back pay, which Gibson called "woefully incomplete justice."
Kane highlighted the personal devastation. "I know people who were made homeless because of this mandate," he told one news outlet. He also shared his own experience of being told his faith was not valid. "I was raised in a home of Catholicism and Buddhism. New York City’s attorney said to my face that since the Dalai Lama is vaccinated and the Pope recommends vaccination, I had no rational basis to avoid the vaccine on religious grounds."
The legal fight continues on other fronts
While the Supreme Court’s refusal to hear the federal appeal is a disappointment, it is not a verdict on the merits of the claim. The court accepts less than one percent of the petitions it receives. "We knew from the beginning that petitioning the Supreme Court was a long shot," Gibson said. "But given the blatant religious discrimination our clients faced, it was a battle we had to fight."
Importantly, the legal foundation built in earlier stages continues to support other battles. Gibson pointed to a precedent set by the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which reinstated the First Amendment claims of two plaintiffs. "That ruling is now a powerful tool we are using to fight for others," she said. Furthermore, many of the same educators are pursuing relief in New York state courts through a parallel case, DiCapua v. City of New York, where they have already won significant relief.
The story of these educators is a modern cautionary tale about government overreach and the selective application of constitutional rights. It asks whether an individual’s sincerely held religious belief can be invalidated by a government official comparing it to a religious leader’s public statement. The Supreme Court may have passed on answering that question this time, but for the teachers who lost their careers, the search for accountability and a guarantee that this "can never happen again" is far from over. Their fight continues to underscore a timeless American principle: that true religious freedom cannot be a privilege granted only to followers of state-approved doctrines.
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