The Warshawsky Law Firm represents a New York State court officer, most recently assigned to the criminal court in Staten Island, who was terminated from her position after being denied a religious exemption to the court system’s COVID-19 vaccination policy. The officer objected to the COVID-19 vaccine based on well-recognized Christian religious principles, including the right of conscience, the body as the Temple of God, and opposition to abortion. She supported her application with a detailed personal statement containing an extensive list of scriptural citations, as well as a personalized letter from the pastor of her church. Nevertheless, her application was denied, without explanation.

We filed suit on her behalf in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York, which covers Brooklyn, Queens, Staten Island, and Long Island. The case was assigned to District Judge Brian M. Cogan. The defendant filed a motion to dismiss, on the grounds that the officer failed to engage in the “interactive process” with the court system by objecting to certain follow-up questions relating to her past and present use of other vaccines and medications. We filed a comprehensive 19-page brief opposing the motion.

On November 27, 2022, Judge Cogan denied the defendant’s motion to dismiss, explaining that “[i]t is not at all clear to the Court which side stopped participating in the interactive process. It is true that instead of answering the questions on the questionnaire, plaintiff objected to each question and explained why she was objecting. That was arguably not an abandonment of the interactive process; for all she knew, defendant might have acknowledged her objection and dispensed with the need for the questionnaire. It is not as if she failed to respond at all; rather, she interacted by sending in the questionnaire with her objections. When defendant then dug in and effectively told her that her objections were not acceptable, plaintiff interacted again shortly thereafter (apparently after consulting with counsel [sic]), submitting what appear to be adequate responses to the questionnaire. It was then that defendant refused to interact by declining even to consider her revised submission. Thus, it may well turn out that it was defendant who unreasonably terminated the interactive process.”

We are very pleased that Judge Cogan denied the court system’s motion to dismiss and allowed our client’s case to proceed forward. The next step in the case is “discovery,” through which we intend to show that the court system acted in an arbitrary and unjustified manner in denying our client’s exemption.