Fifty-six students in 22 school districts on Long Island were expelled or faced expulsion late last month for invalid immunization records, according to a federal lawsuit, more students than previously disclosed. They were shown to have been affected by vaccinations that the state deemed fraudulent. Former Amityville nurse.
At least nine students were unable to attend classes as of Sept. 27, when the lawsuit against the state health department and school district was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York. According to the complaint, some students were banned from attending school for several days.
One of the students was a senior at Sayville High School and faced imminent expulsion, according to the complaint. Court documents describe the student as a “football star” who is heavily scouted by Ivy League schools and “if he is removed from the team, he may lose the opportunity to play college football at Yale.” “I can’t do it.”
A similar lawsuit filed in state court was dismissed on October 1st.
The case stems from a state investigation into former Amityville nurse Julie DeVuono and her clinic, Wild Child Pediatrics, which the state said required students to attend school under state law. He is accused of falsifying mandatory childhood immunization records. DeBuono and her company pleaded guilty last year in connection with the COVID-19 vaccination card scheme.
Sean Clouston, an epidemiologist and public health professor at Stony Brook University, said he thinks it’s fair to exclude students who can’t prove vaccination.
“Vaccines have amazing properties that allow vaccinated people to not only protect themselves, but also help protect the more vulnerable people around them,” he wrote in an email. Ta. “Many people, including other students, may have compromised immune systems… They do not have access to the vaccine themselves and are only protected by the vaccination of others.”
Last month, the state health department invalidated the measles, mumps, diphtheria and other immunization records of 133 Long Island children and one Orange County child, alleging that Mr. DeBuono had falsified vaccinations. The agency had earlier sent subpoenas to more than 100 school districts, asking for vaccination records for about 750 children. It’s unclear how many students are being locked out of school on Long Island.
Newsday reported last week that the Plainedge district excluded four students due to feral child vaccines.
The state Department of Education referred questions to the state Department of Health this week. State Department of Health spokeswoman Erin Clary said the state “does not maintain real-time data on school exclusions.”
The current status of most of the students mentioned in the lawsuit is also unknown.
The 22 districts named as defendants either declined to comment on the pending litigation or did not respond to requests for comment. The school also declined to comment on individual students’ vaccination or enrollment status. Mount Sinai Schools Superintendent Christine Criscione, one of the defendants, said no students were excluded from the district because of the Wild Child vaccine.
The parents’ lawyers did not say whether the students mentioned were actually expelled or whether they had returned to school. Hauppauge-based attorney Chad LaVeglia said he could not comment on specifics but said he and his co-counsel James Mermigis would file an amended complaint.
“When the government takes away a fundamental right like education, it must follow due process. The Constitution requires it, and that is the purpose of this lawsuit,” he said in a statement.
Mermigis had filed a similar lawsuit in state court on behalf of many of the same parents. They sought a court order to prevent the health department and school district from removing students from school.
Nassau County Supreme Court Judge Christopher T. McGrath, who dismissed the state lawsuit, said parents have the option of getting the required vaccinations or getting a blood test that can detect antibodies. They were also able to educate their children at home.
The judge noted that in a state lawsuit in which many of the school districts were defendants, the schools argued that they were acting on the direction of the state health department and therefore were taking no position other than to follow the state’s direction.
Mermigis did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
The state attorney general’s office, which defends the state health department, declined to comment Friday.
In a court filing, Assistant Attorney General Rudolph M. Baptiste told U.S. District Judge Nusrat J. “This is a continuation of a series of similar failed lawsuits.” Fulfill our legal obligations to protect public health and safety.
Mermigis and Lavalier said in separate federal court filings that the state court’s ruling is “not binding or persuasive.”
“The Nassau County judge ignored all of our constitutional arguments,” Mermigis wrote. “Children are being expelled from school or threatened with expulsion without any process or opportunity to be heard.”
“We’re not denying the importance of individual rights, but there’s a much bigger issue at stake here,” said Lisa Chin, a lecturer in public health at the State University of New York at Old Westbury. Ta.
She has seen students excluded from universities because they did not have documentation showing they had been vaccinated.
“One of the things I tell my students is the fact that we don’t really have any historical memory of children and people dying from polio anymore,” she said. “We forgot.”
with Lisa L. Colangelo
Dandanzo covers education for Newsday. Previously, she worked for a community newspaper in Maryland and a personal finance magazine in Washington, DC.
