Case: Individual Employment Rights/First Amendment (S.D.N.Y.)

The City of New York’s motion to dismiss the First Amendment free exercise claim of a Catholic assistant city highway repairman denied a religious exemption from Covid-19 vaccination and later discharged is partially denied, where he sufficiently alleged that a city examiner’s hostility towards his religious beliefs and the examiner’s failure to limit his inquiry to the sincerity of the repairman’s religious convictions was enough to trigger strict scrutiny, a federal court ruled.