Labor & Employment Law Daily Wrap Up, PUBLIC EMPLOYEES—S.D.N.Y.: Sanitation worker’s free exercise claim challenging COVID-19 vaccine mandate dismissed, (Oct 17, 2025)

By Steven D. Cole, J.D.

A New York City sanitation worker whose employment was terminated after he refused vaccination on the basis of his Roman Catholic beliefs failed to advance his claim under the First Amendment’s Free Exercise Clause.

A federal court in New York dismissed the free exercise claim of a former city sanitation worker who lost his job after refusing to receive the COVID-19 vaccine in 2021. His claim faltered because his notice to his employer merely stated a generalized religious objection to the required immunization. To sufficiently state a claim based on the Free Exercise Clause for a denial of religious accommodation, he needed to specifically identify the basis for his religious objection when he notified his employer (Maiorino v. New York City Department of Sanitation, No. 25-cv-0097 (LJL) (S.D.N.Y. Oct. 15, 2025)).

Accommodation request. The employee, a Roman Catholic who had worked as a sanitation worker for the New York City Department of Sanitation (DSNY) since 2005, opposed the order issued on October 20, 2021, by the New York City Commissioner of Health and Mental Hygiene, which required all essential workers receive a COVID-19 vaccine by October 29, 2021. Around November 4, 2021, the employee submitted a formal request to DSNY for a religious accommodation from the vaccine mandate in the form of a fill-in-the-blank affidavit that he had downloaded from the Internet. It stated, in pertinent part, that “the immunizations required by DSNY are contrary to my religious tenets and practices.” Around November 21, DSNY issued a letter denying this initial request, explaining that the information provided was insufficient to establish a basis for religious exemption.

Termination. The employee appealed to the City of New York Reasonable Accommodation Appeals Panel and provided the panel with a letter clarifying that his Roman Catholic beliefs required him to refuse vaccines “that are produced using human cell lines derived from direct abortions.” About a month later, he supplemented his appeal by sending an email to the panel, through his attorney, describing his Catholic upbringing and scriptural support for his belief. The panel denied the appeal on January 5, 2022, without otherwise communicating with him or asking for further information. He was discharged from his employment with DSNY on February 11, 2022.

The employee subsequently sued DSNY and the City of New York alleging that they violated his First Amendment right to freely exercise his religion. The complaint also alleged three state-law claims based on his termination, failure to accommodate his religious beliefs, and failure to engage in cooperative dialogue about his request for religious accommodation. The defendants filed a joint motion to dismiss.

DSNY is not a suable entity. The defendants correctly maintained that DSNY, as an agency of the city, was not subject to suit; rather, “[a]ll actions and proceedings for the recovery of penalties for the violation of any law shall be brought in the name of the city of New York.” Regardless, the employee abandoned his claims against DSNY by failing to respond to this argument in his opposition to the defendants’ dismissal motion.

Alleged free exercise violation. The employee conceded that the vaccine mandate was facially constitutional. He instead brought an “as applied” challenge, alleging that the policy and procedures for evaluating requests for religious accommodation were neither neutral nor generally applicable. More specifically, he charged that DSNY denied his application for a religious accommodation because he sought this accommodation based on his Roman Catholic beliefs.

The fatal flaw with this argument, however, was that he pled no facts to indicate that DSNY was even aware that he was a Catholic or that he objected to the vaccine because of its development using aborted fetal cell lines. DSNY’s decision was based solely on the affidavit, which provided no details about the employee’s religious objections to the COVID-19 vaccine. The Second Circuit has made clear that “a plaintiff cannot merely allege that she has ‘religious beliefs’ which included ‘religious practices of non-vaccination,’ without providing some detail about what the beliefs are and why vaccination conflicts with them.”

The court acknowledged that two other district court cases in the Second Circuit with similar allegations against DSNY have proceeded beyond the motion-to-dismiss stage. Tellingly, though, the plaintiffs in those cases provided DSNY with more information about their religious beliefs and practices, thereby making an inference of hostile treatment on that basis at least plausible.

The employee’s allegation here that he informed the panel of his religious views did not support his free exercise claim with respect to DSNY’s decision for two separate reasons. First, he did not allege that DSNY was aware of the information contained in his communications to the panel, which is a body entirely independent of DSNY. Second, the complaint contained no well-pled allegation that the panel ever assessed the employee’s supplementary materials. The only question before the panel was whether DSNY, considering the information before it, properly denied his request for religious accommodation.

The employee affirmatively alleged that appeals submitted to the panel were decided by its evaluation of only the documentation submitted to DSNY—i.e., solely on the basis of the affidavit, which did not mention his religion. Furthermore, he made no argument that the policy limiting the record on appeal to only those documents before DSNY was either facially hostile against Catholics, or that it was applied in a hostile manner. Nor did he argue that, as a matter of policy or practice, the panel could consider documents submitted after DSNY issued its decision.

State law claims. Having ruled that the employee’s sole federal claim necessitated dismissal, the court declined to exercise supplemental jurisdiction over the remaining state-law claims.

The case is No. 1:25-cv-00097-LJL.

Judge: Liman, L.

Attorneys: Jeannette Poyerd-Loiacono (Law Offices of Jeannette Poyerd-Loiacono) for Vincent Maiorino. Kathleen Linnane (Paduano & Weintraub) for New York City Department of Sanitation and City of New York.

Companies: New York City Department of Sanitation; City of New York

Cases: PublicEmployees ReligiousDiscrimination Discharge Covid19 NewYorkNews