Lorraine Masciarelli, hired by the DOE in September 2000, was suspended without pay and ultimately fired on September 5, 2022, after she refused the agency's COVID-19 vaccine mandate on religious grounds and her accommodation requests were denied at every level — first by the DOE itself, then by a Scheinman Arbitration and Mediation Services arbitrator on October 4, 2021, and finally by the Citywide Reasonable Accommodation Appeals Panel. Those facts are drawn from the complaint and have not been adjudicated.
The case turned on a significant deposition admission. Masciarelli argued that the DOE's Rule 30(b)(6) witness, Kathleen Rodi, admitted that regardless of what religious belief a person had, every religious exemption request made to the DOE for an accommodation from the COVID-19 vaccine mandate was denied as a matter of adopted policy. On that basis, Masciarelli sought leave to add new allegations to her existing New York City Human Rights Law claim, arguing that the DOE never actually analyzed whether granting her a specific accommodation would have constituted an undue hardship, rendering the agency's undue-hardship defense pretextual.
Magistrate Judge Vera M. Scanlon, writing for the Eastern District of New York, granted the motion to amend. The court held that Masciarelli was not raising a new claim but adding new factual allegations to a claim already in the case, and that the DOE had not demonstrated the undue prejudice required to block amendment. The court also rejected the DOE's argument that Masciarelli had previously abandoned her city-law claims, clarifying that the prior motion-to-dismiss ruling addressed only state-law claims — not city claims — and that neither that ruling nor the oral argument transcript supported a finding that city claims had been waived.
The motion to compel fared worse. Masciarelli sought two categories of records: SAMS arbitration decisions granting other DOE employees religious exemptions, and Citywide Appeals Panel decisions doing the same. The court denied both requests. Applying the Second Circuit's standard from In re Teligent, Inc., 640 F.3d 53 (2d Cir. 2011), the court held that a party seeking disclosure of confidential mediation communications must demonstrate a special need for the material, resulting unfairness from the lack of discovery, and that the need outweighs the confidentiality interest. Masciarelli's proposal to redact personal identifying information from the records did not satisfy that standard. The court also found the motion untimely, noting that the existence of multiple religious-accommodation arbitrations had been known to Masciarelli long before the deposition she cited as the trigger.
The court certified fact discovery as otherwise complete, stayed limited expert discovery on pension benefits pending dispositive motions, and directed the parties to commence dispositive motion practice by April 10, 2026. The parties were also directed to confer on whether to seek court-annexed mediation and report by March 20, 2026.