Five Orthodox Jews, including a rabbi, and one Catholic are suing New York Mayor Eric Adams and his Commissioner of Health over their discriminatory and unconstitutional COVID-19 “vaccine passport” regime dubbed “Key to NYC.” Thomas More Society attorneys filed a federal lawsuit on February 7, 2022, in New York’s United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York, alleging an “unprecedented abuse of power.”

“Key to NYC,” launched by former Mayor de Blasio and now being enforced by Adams, denies unvaccinated persons access to a wide range of premises, comprising most of social life in the City. As de Blasio declared: “[I]f you want to participate in our society fully, you’ve got to get vaccinated. You’ve got to get vaccinated.”

The eighteen plaintiffs, three of whom sue also on behalf of their minor children, decline on religious grounds to be injected or to have their minor children injected, with any of the available COVID-19 vaccines due to their connection to cell lines taken from children who were killed by abortion and several other religious reasons.

“The intention and effect of  ‘Key to NYC’ is to create a two-tiered society in the City of New York,” explained Thomas More Society Special Counsel Christopher Ferrara, “in which those who decline to be vaccinated against COVID-19 will be reduced to the status of second-class citizens, deprived of normal social life until they consent to injection. Nothing like this has ever been seen in the history of the country. Tyranny in the name of COVID here reaches a new level.”

The suit details violations of the First, Fifth, and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution by Adams, Health Commissioner Dr. Dave Chokshi, and incoming Health Commissioner Dr. Ashwin Vasan.”

The “Key to NYC” does not permit any medical or religious exemption to its exclusion of the unvaccinated from full participation in New York society and imposes escalating fines on “any person or entity who is determined to have violated the requirements of the Key to NYC program.”  Yet, at the same time, noted Ferrara, ‘Key to NYC’ is riddled with exemptions for favored groups and activities, including visiting pop stars, professional athletes, and their huge entourages. “After all,” said Ferrara, “the privileged vaccinated class cannot be deprived of their entertainment. Yet these plaintiffs are deprived of basic human rights merely because they decline to be injected with vaccines that do not even prevent transmission of the virus, as everyone now knows.”

According to Ferrara, the “Key to NYC” undermines at every turn the stated government interest in limiting the spread of COVID-19. “The ‘Key to NYC’ regime is not only unconstitutional,” declared Ferrara, “but utterly senseless from a public health perspective. Millions of the vaccinated are allowed to spread the virus, but a few religious objectors to vaccination are virtually ghettoized. The only purpose of this tyrannical regime is vindictive punishment of the unvaccinated by depriving them of numerous aspects of social life, which ‘Key to NYC’ calls ‘incentivizing.’”

“Never in the history of this country, nor in the history of pandemics generally, has any government declared an entire class of citizens personae non gratae based on a refusal to be vaccinated,” said Ferrara, “much less with vaccines now known to be ineffective at preventing transmission of a communicable disease and to be unnecessary for children, who have an infinitesimal risk of death from COVID-19. What we see here is the sad corruption of public health policy by power politics.”

The federal complaint labels the “Key to NYC” as a “reckless, ill-conceived government policy that ignores sound medical science and the principle of informed consent to medical treatment.”

Read the Verified Complaint filed February 7, 2022, with the United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York by Thomas More Society attorneys, in Jane Doe 1, et al. v. Eric Adams, Mayor of the City of New York et al. here.