NYC teachers who refused COVID vax were flagged for law enforcement: report

In federal court in Manhattan on Wednesday, John Bursch, an attorney representing teachers suing the city because they were fired for refusing the mandated Covid vaccine, said that these educators were flagged with "problem codes" and their fingerprints were then sent to the FBI and Department of Justice.

In the recorded arguments from Wednesday's court session, Bursch said, "When the city puts these problem codes on employees who have been terminated because of their unconstitutional policies, not only do they have this flag in their files, but their fingerprints are sent with that flag to the FBI and the New York Criminal Justice Services."

Educator Michael Kane, writing for Teachers for Choice, detailed how the process of "flagging" originated with the Department of Education and the details were revealed in an affidavit, posted on the Teachers for Choice website in full, from educator Betsy Combier in his Kane v. de Blasio lawsuit. As Justia reports, that case was an early instance of an educator suing the city over its Covid vaccine mandate.

In Combier's affidavit, she explained how "the flag" is a label "the DOE puts in the personnel file of employees to indicate that they should not be hired due to unexplained misconduct of some kind."

"Employees can be flagged for everything from receiving an unsatisfactory or ineffective rating to engaging in egregious criminal acts," she said.

Combier said, "When the DOE puts a problem code in the employee's personnel file, it also places a flag on the employee's fingerprints, which is then sent to the national databases at both the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the State Division of Criminal Justice Services."

The city's attorney, Susan Paulson, argued in court that the teachers were fired not for misconduct, but for failing to meet an employment requirement, namely the newly imposed Covid vaccination. 

According to Kane, these teachers were still tagged with the problem code and their fingerprints sent to federal authorities.

"I believe that unvaccinated NYC educators were being setup to be viewed as 'right-wing extremists' or even 'terrorists,'" Kane wrote. "We know for many years Dr. Peter Hotez has been promoting an insane narrative that those who are 'vaccine hesitant' are an extremely dangerous group, and that we need to look to Homeland Security and even NATO for suggestions of how to deal with such a 'threat.'" 

Dr. Peter Hotez, according to journalist Dan Cohen's Substack, is Dr. Fauci's "underling" and has acted as a "deceptive political figure" in pushing Covid vaccine mandates.

According to Bloomberg, A three-judge panel of the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit will rule after the arguments whether to grant the workers an injunction against NYC's mandate.