More than 300 court employees protested outside New York Chief Judge Janet DiFiore’s Westchester County home Saturday demanding she scrap a COVID-19 vaccination mandate set for Monday.
They chanted “What do we want? No mandate. What do we want? Choice.”
“We want to have a choice, get a vaccine or weekly testing like the NYPD,” Dennis Quirk, president of New York State Court Officers Association, said. “If it is good enough for the cops, it should be good enough for court employees. She is a dictator, she won’t even talk to us.”
Quirk received a 30-day suspension in August for posting DiFiore’s home addresses on social media in order to encourage protests outside of her residences.
New York City court workers and judges are supposed to be vaccinated by 5 p.m. Monday.
A judge Friday issued a temporary stay of the mandate, but it only covered court workers outside of New York City.
“Court employees are free to voice their opinions about administrative decisions, even ones that have led to 13,200 of the system’s 15,600 judges and employees to get vaccinated so far,” said court system spokesman Lucian Chalfen.
