A bunch of safety guards at state-run well being care services has filed the most recent suit difficult obligatory vaccination towards COVID-19 — citing the potential for long-term unintended effects from getting the pictures.
The 10 guards — who work on the SUNY Downstate Hospital in Brooklyn, the SUNY Stony Brook hospital on Long Island and the state Veterans Home in northern Westchester County — additionally say they need to have the choice of getting repeatedly examined for the coronavirus as an alternative of being vaccinated, as lecturers do.
Their suit, filed Wednesday in Syracuse federal court docket, alleges violations of their 14th Amendment rights to equal safety underneath the legislation, to refuse undesirable medical remedy and to due course of.
It seeks court docket orders barring enforcement of the vaccine mandate — which is about to take impact Monday — and defending them from disciplinary motion in the event that they don’t meet the deadline.
It additionally comes amid a pending court docket battle over whether or not employees in hospitals and nursing properties ought to have the ability to declare a spiritual exemption to keep away from getting vaccinated.
The suit names as defendants Gov. Kathy Hochul, the state of New York, state Health Commissioner Howard Zucker, the state Health Department and the state Public Health and Planning Council.
The guards are all members of the New York State Correctional Officers and Police Benevolent Association, which is funding the court docket problem and despatched a message to its 20,000 members saying that the union “will not stand idly by as the State attempts to trample over our members’ rights.”
The message, obtained by The Post, additionally referred to as the vaccine mandate “a slap in the face to our members who were hailed as heroes just a few short months ago, and now the State has cast them aside.”
Union lawyer Dennis Vacco, a former state legal professional normal Dennis Vacco, mentioned, “At the end of the day if the mandate was similar to the requirement imposed on educators, which is: get vaccines or get tested regularly, I don’t think we would have a claim.”
“We don’t want our members or these plaintiffs to be forced to give up their rights,” he mentioned.
The suit cites “recent research” that implies getting vaccinated “presents a heightened risk of adverse side effects to those who have previously contracted and recovered from COVID-19.”
“Given that the vaccines have been administered for less than two years, it is impossible to determine and identify and identify potential side effects that will develop over time,” court docket papers say.
The suit additionally alleges that the defendants “irrationally assume that Plaintiffs, who work in a hospital setting that is inherently designed and regulated to prevent the spread of disease, present a greater risk of contracting and spreading COVID-19 than students and teachers attending public schools within the State of New York.”
Hochul’s office didn’t instantly return a request for remark.
