New York State Court of Appeals Rules Against Teachers in Clarke/O'Reilly Decision

The state’s highest court ruled that tenured teachers’ due process rights were not violated when the NYC Department of Education put them on leave without pay under the DOE's COVID-19 vaccine mandate.

On October 17, the highest court in the state of New York issued a decision affirming the appellate decisions in favor of the Board of Education in Clarke et al. v. Board of Education of the City School District of New York City et al. and O’Reilly et al. v. Board of Education of the City School District of New York City et al.

The two cases were heard together in a September 11, 2024 Court of Appeals hearing, since their claims were substantially the same. The original lawsuits had been filed by eight tenured teachers employed by the New York City Department of Education who were put on leave without pay and fired for refusing to comply with the DOE’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate.

The Clarke/O’Reilly cases hinged on due process rights, with petitioners-appellants’ attorney Jimmy Wagner arguing that putting the eight teachers on leave without pay and firing them without giving them hearings violated section 3020 of New York State’s Education Law.

The Court of Appeals decision rejected the claim that the teachers were owed 3020 due process, accepting the Board of Education argument that the mandate was imposed as a condition of employment and as such was exempt from due process requirements. In the decision, the judges did not address Wagner’s argument that conditions of employment must be set before employment begins.

The judges wrote:

Petitioners were not entitled to the hearing procedures outlined in Education Law §§ 3020 and 3020-a before being placed on leave without pay. These statutory provisions establish a detailed and comprehensive system for conducting disciplinary hearings for tenured teachers. While tenured teachers have a right to these statutory hearings when faced with disciplinary proceedings, these provisions are not applicable to petitioners, who were placed on leave without pay for failure to comply with the vaccine mandate, a condition of employment.

This Court has long distinguished between disciplinary proceedings and employment conditions for employees entitled to statutory civil service protections, and has held that statutory hearings are not warranted when employment eligibility conditions are enforced. . . .

Court of Appeals Judges Wilson, Garcia, Singas, Cannataro, Troutman, and Halligan, along with Second Department Appeals Court Judge Janice Taylor, concurred in issuing the decision. Taylor had stepped in to fill the seventh seat in the judicial panel after Court of Appeals Judge Jenny Rivera recused herself.

Asked to comment on the Court’s decision, Wagner said simply, “Teacher tenure law in New York State is officially finished.”

Rachel Maniscalco, a petitioner-appellant who spoke with me about the case at the hearing, also commented on the decision on Instagram:

Our lawsuit that was heard by the New York State Court of Appeals in Albany on September 11th was not victorious. We lost, and there are no appeals left.

It devastates me to have to write this post. Of course, because I was fired after a decade of exemplary service with no due process and no recourse; of course, because I won’t receive backpay or the opportunity for my job back (through this avenue, anyway); and of course, because the demons who did this to us (and continue to lie and gaslight) remain unscathed and unaccountable.

But most of all, it devastates me to consider the much farther reaching consequences for all of the people who have been affected by this, and the people who were really counting on a positive outcome and a verdict that would make us whole. I am so very sorry. There are no words I can even think of to ameliorate the great injustice that has been done to us.

Thank you for your prayers, your kind words, and your support.

In his comments after the September 11 hearing, Jimmy Wagner noted that a decision in favor of the Board of Education could undermine not just tenure rights for teachers, but also labor rights for public employees of all kinds throughout the state.

It remains to be seen how this ruling will affect decisions in the many ongoing lawsuits challenging New York’s COVID-19 vaccine mandates, and how employers might apply the Court’s permission to impose new rules and requirements on their existing workforce.