New York State Unified Court System Secures Dismissal of Article 78 Petition in Vaccine Mandate Challenge

Paul Weiss secured a major victory for the New York State Unified Court System (UCS) in a special proceeding brought by the Suffolk County Court Employees Association (SCCEA) challenging a New York State Public Employees Relations Board decision related to the UCS COVID-19 vaccination and testing policies. The New York Supreme Court, Suffolk County, granted the motions to dismiss filed by the UCS and the board and denied SCCEA’s Article 78 petition.

SCCEA brought the petition challenging the board’s determination that SCCEA’s improper labor practice charge had insufficiently alleged that the UCS failed to bargain over the procedures used to implement its COVID-19 vaccination and testing policies. SCCEA claimed that its improper practice charge adequately alleged that the UCS failed to engage in impact bargaining, and that the board’s decision in November 2023 to narrow—to the exclusion of SCCEA and other unions—the scope of the remedy previously granted by an administrative law judge was arbitrary and capricious and unsupported by substantial evidence in the record.

In denying the Article 78 petition and granting the motions to dismiss, the Supreme Court limited its review to whether the board’s decision was arbitrary and capricious, an abuse of discretion, or affected by an error of law. The court found that the “record clearly demonstrates, and indeed, [SCCEA] admits . . . that it did not include the failure to engage in impact bargaining in its [improper practice] charges.” Despite that concession, SCCEA asked the court to read into its charges a failure to engage in impact bargaining so that SCCEA would be included in the relief previously ordered by the board’s administrative law judge. The court rejected the request, explaining that the board’s decision to “limit the relief to the unions that specifically asked for the relief and thereby properly placed the UCS on notice of the claim” was neither arbitrary or capricious nor legally erroneous. Finally, the court agreed with the UCS and the board that SCCEA failed to exhaust its administrative remedies by filing “an exception to a charge it did not raise in the first instance.”

The Paul, Weiss team included litigation partners Bruce Birenboim, Liza Velazquez, Gregory Laufer (who argued the motion) and Lina Dagnew.