NY Workers for Choice Submits Public Comment to Religious Liberty Commission
Please send our letter to the commission yourself. Simple instructions on how to do so in this post
Today, June 12, 2025, NY Workers for Choice submitted the below letter to President Trump’s Religious Liberty Commission which will be convening for the first time on Monday, June 16.
The letter details 2 major points of horrendous religious discrimination that the City of New York has perpetrated on the NYC workers who declined the COVID shot on religious grounds.
If you submitted a religious exemption for a COVID vaccine mandate in NYC, please send our letter to the following email address:
RLC@usdoj.gov
Please also briefly describe your situation. Tell your name, job, agency you worked for, how many years you worked for them, and what happened to you after you submitted your religious exemption.
Below is our letter (downloadable as pdf file at end of post)
June 12, 2025
TO: Religious Liberty Commission
c/o White House Faith Office
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue
NW Washington, DC 20500
Sent via email to: RLC@usdoj.gov
Dear Members of the Religious Liberty Commission;
We write to you today as New York Workers for Choice (NYWC), an organization representing New York City workers whose religious rights were illegally violated during COVID through the implementation of the City's vaccine mandate. Our religious liberties are still being violated till this day as nearly all of us were never allowed to return to our jobs.
Teachers for Choice, Bravest for Choice, Cops 4 Freedom, and Strongest for Choice makeup NYWC. Together we represent thousands of municipal employees, including teachers, firefighters, cops, sanitation workers and more who suffered brutal religious discrimination in NYC. These are the groups we formed to fight for our rights at City Hall, at the Capitol in Albany, as well as in state and federal courts for the past four years. We have won multiple lawsuits, but NYC has appealed all of our victories keeping us out of work for years.
We would like to draw the commission's attention to two of the many horrendous violations of religious liberty that occurred in NYC during the COVID crisis, which are:
The 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals struck down NYC’s policy that denied religious accommodations as facially discriminatory, yet the city never stopped using that discriminatory policy, and;
NYC had a policy to deny all religious accommodations that referenced aborted fetal cells used to make COVID vaccines, which clearly targeted Christians with sincere religious objections.
Facially discriminatory policy
One of our lead attorney’s is Sujata Gibson of The Gibson Law Firm. She has been representing us in multiple lawsuits since September of 2021. The information contained in this letter was gleaned from letters Ms. Gibson has written to various stakeholders regarding our federal cases, namely Kane v. de Blasio and New Yorkers for Religious Liberty (NYFRL) v. The City of New York.
“In the 17 years I have practiced as a civil rights attorney, I have never seen such blatant examples of religious animus as I have seen the City of New York engage in against my clients and thousands of others similarly situated just like them,” said Ms. Gibson.
In the beginning when NYC workers of faith first submitted requests for religious accommodation to the City, rather than assess our requests in good faith, the City adopted a different scheme. It chose to narrow the number of workers accommodated by discriminating against most faiths and only accommodating favored beliefs.
First, the City adopted a facially discriminatory policy and Mayor de Blasio bragged in a press conference that pursuant to that policy, the City would only accommodate Christian Scientists and Jehovah’s Witnesses and would reject any personally held beliefs and beliefs of other religions. In Kane v. de Blasio, 19 F.4th 152 (2d Cir. 2021), the Second Circuit held that these policies were not neutral or generally applicable, that strict scrutiny applied, and that plaintiffs were likely to succeed.
The Appeals Court sent the case back to the lower court to fix this discriminatory policy. The City’s “remediation” was to allow their defense attorneys to review the applications and reinstate with back pay any employees found to qualify under legal standards. However the City merely rubber stamped the denials claiming undue hardship, without explaining why 165 similarly situated employees favored under the old discriminatory policy could remain accommodated while those whose beliefs were unconstitutionally barred could not be.
After the Second Circuit struck down the City’s policy, the City continued the discrimination against municipal employees. The City not only failed to remediate, but refused to repudiate the “stricken standards” - as they are referred to in related litigation - and even began offering them as an option in nearly every City department.
Alternatively, those whose religious beliefs were not favored under the stricken standards could appeal to a “Citywide Panel” run by the City’s defense attorneys in the Kane case. Subsequent discovery in related cases has shown that the Citywide Panel applied discriminatory standards as well, continuing to discriminate against personally held or idiosyncratic beliefs and those grounded in an objection to the use of aborted fetal cell lines in the production or development of the vaccines, and arbitrarily applying an unsupported “undue hardship” defense to many applications.
Aborted Fetal Cells
Further discovery also shows that the Commissioner of Health in NYC issued a letter instructing that employees with concerns about aborted fetal cell lines be denied accommodation based on the Commissioner’s view that the concern lacked merit in light of the fact that some religious leaders were vaccinated anyway. This is a square violation of the Establishment Clause which prohibits the government from taking sides in religious questions. We will happily provide a copy of this letter from the NYC Commissioner upon your request.
There are so many additional facts surrounding the horrors that people of faith were put through in NYC. One of the few silver linings to this nightmare has been that we have attracted the best legal minds in the country to our defense, namely Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), Children’s Health Defense (CHD), Nelson Madden Black, and The Gibson Law Firm.
Nevertheless our nightmare continues as the courts move extremely slowly. Many of us have lost our homes, apartments, mortgages, gotten divorced or filed for bankruptcy. We have been forced to leave the city, leave the state, and some have even been forced to leave the country!
We know of multiple men forced into homelessness from being fired over the vaccine mandate; two of them are immigrant men of color. And tragically we know of one suicide.
What has happened to people of faith in New York City must never happen again. We urge the Religious Liberty Commission to take all actions at its disposal to help us before more of us lose our homes, go bankrupt, or tragically lose life entirely.
Thank you so much for your time and attention to this matter. All praise to the most high God in all glorious forms;
Sincerely;
Michael Kane, Founder Teachers for Choice
Aura Moody, Teachers for Choice
Diane Pagen, Teachers for Choice
Matthew Connor, Bravest for Choice
Sophy Medina, Bravest for Choice
Arthur Roldan, Cops 4 Freedom
John Macari, New York's Finest: Retired & Unfiltered Podcast
George Garvey, 16 Strongest for Choice
***The eight of us sign representing thousands of NYC workers fired for their sincerely held religious beliefs
Added! https://www.whiteroseintelligence.com/teachers-for-choice/
I've been told in my Constitution class that Freedom of expression of religion includes freedom of conscience because you express what you believe. Even though it's not stated in the Constitution, the Founding Fathers debated this issue. James Madison said, "Gov't is instituted to protect every sort of property. Conscience is the most sacred of all property."