By Kate Anderson
Daily Caller News Foundation
Many employees fired for refusing to get the COVID-19 vaccine for religious reasons will not be able to get rehired due to being assigned a “problem code” by the New York City Department of Education (DOE), a code that is also sent to the FBI, according to oral arguments made Wednesday by Alliance Defending Freedom in the case of New Yorkers for Religious Liberty v. the City of New York.
Mayor Eric Adams announced that New York City’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate for city employees will end on Feb. 10 after thousands of workers were fired for declining to adhere to the rule, but stated that those workers would now be able to reapply for their positions. Alliance for Defending Freedom (ADF), a legal firm focused on protecting the First Amendment rights of Americans, pointed out during oral arguments that many former employees would not be able to get their jobs back because the DOE had marked workers who refused to comply with the mandate with a “problem code” that is also tied to their fingerprints and sent to the FBI.
John Bursch, attorney for Alliance Defending Freedom, told the Daily Caller News Foundation that the mayor’s claim about fired employees getting rehired was ” just not true in every case.”
“Even for those who are eligible for reinstatement, when they apply they’ve all got so-called ‘problem codes’ in their personal file because they purportedly failed to fulfill a contractual condition, which was to get vaccinated,” Bursch said. “What is really horrible about that is not only does it affect their ability to get rehired by the state of New York, it affects their ability to go to any other employer because that ‘problem code’ note is paired with their fingerprints as a warning flag and sent to the FBI and the New York criminal justice services.”
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Workers discovered that they had been flagged with “problem codes” and told that they could not get them removed until they had fulfilled the necessary work requirements by getting vaccinated, several documents, including employee files and email correspondence, provided to the DCNF by ADF show. One email sent from the DOE stated that “all employees who were placed on 2VM vaccine mandate leave” were given codes.
Another document, filed by an attorney with knowledge of the case, argued that the DOE’s claims that “problem codes” can only be viewed by the department are untrue.
“To the contrary, any non-DOE school or official that wants to learn whether a former DOE employee has a problem code in his or her personnel file can easily do so in a variety of ways,” the attorney wrote. “For example, non-DOE schools which offer DOE-funded positions have access to the DOE’s payment portal, Galaxy, which allows them to see problem codes; indeed Plaintiffs present evidence of at least 15 former DOE employees who were not hired at non-DOE schools because the non-DOE schools discovered their problem codes.”
One former employee, a teacher and therapist at NYC’s Early Intervention Program for children with disabilities or developmental issues, said that she was informed about her “problem code” by the agency she was working with, which has no affiliation with the DOE and should not have access to the “problem code,” according to documents from ADF.
“I was shocked that I had been flagged as ineligible to work, because such problem codes often indicate poor performance reviews, misconduct, or even criminal activity. None of these apply to me,” the employee said in her statement. “I did not understand how someone from outside the DOE could even possess this incorrect information about me, I was extremely embarrassed by its negative implications, and I was immensely disappointed that I had to inform the families that I had been assigned to that I could not service their children.”
Bursch told the DCNF that, for example, Pope Francis’ endorsement of the vaccine made it much more difficult for New York Catholics to obtain a religious exemption.
“The city simply didn’t like that some people objected to the vaccine on religious grounds and they punished them for that,” Bursch said.
Adams, the New York City DOE and the FBI did not respond to the DCNF’s request for comment.
This story originally was published by the Daily Caller News Foundation.
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EDITOR’S NOTE: What is behind the current war against America’s children? Why are so many adults killing their unborn children right up to the moment of birth, or even after? Why are millions of kids sexualized virtually from birth, and injected with an experimental “vaccine” proven to be both ineffective and dangerous, then as toddlers transported to events glorifying mentally ill, demonically possessed men dressed as women?
Why are America’s children systematically sexualized at school, and by transgender recruiters on social media platforms like TikTok, seducing many into “identifying” as the opposite gender, or a brand-new imaginary gender, then encouraged to take powerful drugs and hormones and have their healthy breasts amputated or undergo chemical or surgical castration?
Why are our children simultaneously indoctrinated with toxic Marxist ideologies like “critical race theory” intended to condition them to hate and reject their own country, parents, faith, race, gender and themselves? Why are they simultaneously being frightened of the future by being fed lurid, terrifying – and groundless – apocalyptic tales of the imminent destruction of the world due to global warming?
No wonder youth suicides have skyrocketed, as have depression, anxiety, addiction and drug overdoses. Indeed, fentanyl, the No. 1 cause of death of younger Americans 18 to 45, destroys multitudes of children annually.
Make no mistake: The harm being done to America’s children in this multi-front war is not accidental: Children are the primary target.
WHY? How can all this be happening in the greatest nation on earth? Who and what is behind it? And HOW CAN IT BE STOPPED?
Find out in the explosive January issue of WND’s critically acclaimed monthly Whistleblower magazine, “WINNING THE WAR AGAINST AMERICA’S CHILDREN,” available in both print and state-of-the-art digital editions.
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