The Supreme Court of the United States is set to hear a case involving New York City’s vaccine mandate for municipal workers after it was challenged by an NYPD detective.
As reported by Politico, Detective Anthony Marciano’s legal challenge was initially rejected by Justice Sonia Sotomayor, one of the court’s three left-wing judges. Marciano subsequently resubmitted his request to Justice Clarence Thomas, widely considered the most conservative member of the court, who agreed to take up the case; deliberations will take place on October 7th.
“I reapplied to Justice Thomas, who is a strict Constitutionalist,” said Patricia Finn, an attorney with Make Americans Free Again, the group that is representing Marciano. “I believed his previous opinions were in line with what I was arguing.”
Detective Marciano had previously sued the city of New York last year in response to the policy dictating that all municipal workers must receive the COVID-19 vaccine. Marciano, whose applications for religious and medical exemptions were rejected, claimed that he had gained natural immunity through previous exposure to the disease as a result of his frontline work, and thus should not be forced to take the vaccine.
Marciano’s request for a stay that would halt the vaccine mandate until his case’s completion was rejected by the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, which sent the detective and his legal team to the Supreme Court instead.
“I think the court has been waiting for a case like mine,” Finn continued. “I think they are waiting for somebody to approach the issue in a very clean and straightforward way.”
The outcome of the case could have major implications for the COVID policies of Mayor Eric Adams (D-N.Y.), who was first elected in 2021. Adams has since rescinded vaccine mandates he had previously imposed on private sector employees and students involved in after-school activities, but has refused to repeal the mandate for city workers.