(LifeSiteNews) — Attorneys representing multiple religious New York City educators have filed a petition with the U.S. Supreme Court in a case known as Kane v. City of New York, asking it to review a lower court decision that denied the educators’ ability to live and work according to their religious beliefs. The educators are challenging a city mandate that required them to receive a vaccination in conflict with their deeply held religious beliefs.
“NYC Mayor Eric Adams is still fighting unvaccinated workers viciously, tooth and nail, to keep us from returning to our jobs,” wrote chief petitioner Michael Kane, leader of Teachers for Choice, which describes itself as “a group of educators fighting to be reinstated & compensated, fired for not getting the shot.”
“The situation is so bad we have no choice but to seek relief from the highest court in the nation,” noted Kane.
“This isn’t something that’s going away,” Kane previously told LifeSiteNews. “This isn’t something that people have forgotten.”
“This is one of the worst civil rights violations of this century,” he declared. “Democrats want to pretend it never happened, but that’s not happening.”
On July 21, 2025, attorneys with Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), Children’s Health Defense and Nelson Madden Black filed a petition for a writ of certiorari (cert petition) with the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) on behalf of 19 fired unvaccinated educators from NYC. This has combined the original Kane v. de Blasio and Keil v. City of New York cases into a single petition.
ADF attorneys noted that New York City officials allowed Christian Scientists and Jehovah’s Witnesses to claim exemptions from the policy, but others were denied. In some cases, educators were denied because their faith leader — including Pope Francis — publicly endorsed vaccines, but in others, no explanation was given.
READ: Trump admin ends Biden-era vaccine discrimination, orders purge of federal COVID jab records
“Petitioners are hardworking teachers and education administrators,” the petition begins. “They sacrificed to serve New York students. But City officials pushed them out of their jobs—and even out of the City — because Petitioners had the ‘wrong’ faith.”
One egregious example cited in the court filing is that of Catholic school teacher Margaret Chu, who taught English in East Harlem Public Schools:
She attended Catholic schools, completed all the sacraments, and follows the Bible. Per her religious beliefs, Chu declined the COVID-19 vaccine and sought a religious accommodation to continue working. Chu’s parish supported her request. But like Kane’s, her request was denied because the Pope — whom Chu disagrees with on this issue — publicly endorsed the vaccine. On remand, the citywide panel accepted that Chu had sincere religious beliefs but denied her accommodation request because it viewed Chu’s religious beliefs — which come from her ‘moral conscience’ — as ‘personal’ and therefore not ‘religious.’
“Our country was founded on the idea that religious people should be free to exercise their deeply held beliefs, and government officials have no business picking and choosing winners and losers when it comes to religious conviction,” said ADF Senior Counsel and Vice President of Appellate Advocacy John Bursch.
“By mandating that these educators be vaccinated or lose their job, New York is putting a political agenda ahead of education. Just because Pope Francis may have supported the vaccine doesn’t mean that every Catholic will share that view, and we are urging the court to hear this case and bring justice to these educators and others like them for the discrimination they endured over a deeply personal decision.”
Kane v. City of New York is just one of three cases submitted to SCOTUS seeking relief from unfair COVID-19 vaccine mandates which upended lives. The others are John Does 1-2 v. Hochul and Wilkins v. Herron.
Kelsey Dallas, writing a SCOTUSblog, notes:
With these petitions, the court has a chance to address what some justices may see as unfinished business. The Supreme Court previously weighed in on two vaccine mandates imposed by the Biden administration with two opinions released on Jan. 13, 2022: one decision blocked a mandate for large employers and the other allowed a mandate for health care facilities receiving federal funds to take effect. But the court turned down several other opportunities to temporarily block or hear arguments on vaccination requirements from states, cities, and individual employers, sometimes over the objections of its most conservative justices.
“Regardless of whether the justices will take part, it’s certainly fair to say that pandemic-era vaccine wars are still being waged and may be unlikely to abate any time soon,” concluded Dallas.
