NYC Teachers' Bid To Stop Vax Mandate Rejected At Supreme Court

NEW YORK CITY — Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor rejected a last-minute, last-ditch Supreme Court petition by a group of teachers aiming to stop New York City's looming coronavirus vaccine mandate for educators.

The denial was reported just before 5 p.m. Friday: the deadline that Mayor Bill de Blasio had set for unvaccinated teachers to get their shots, or else be unable to work next week. Sotomayor did not refer the matter to her fellow justices, according to reports.

The petition, filed, Thursday asked justices to grant an emergency injunction to pause the mandate from taking effect.

"Given the vaccine mandates upcoming deadline and the typical length of appellate proceedings, this Court will lose the opportunity to provide meaningful relief to public-school workers at 5 P.M., October 1 if it does not enter an injunction now," the petition states.

The filing represented the legal end-of-the-line for teachers seeking to fight the city's vaccine mandate.

All other courts have effectively sided with the city, paving the way for a requirement that de Blasio and education officials said would guarantee school staff are 100 percent vaccinated.

And it was unclear Friday morning whether Justice Brett Kavanaugh's positive COVID-19 diagnosis — as reported in the New York Times — would affect whether the court took up the petition.

As the Friday vaccine deadline loomed, about 93 percent of teachers — roughly 72,500 out of 78,000 — were vaccinated, according to numbers shared by the Department of Education. That figure was higher for principals (98 percent) but lower for the department overall, which was about 90 percent vaccinated.

The petition argued stopping the mandate would avert staff shortfalls.

"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," the petition states.

Read the petition here, as uploaded by SCOTUSblog.