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A tenured social studies teacher will have his request for rescission of retirement granted after the New York City Department of Education waited nearly four years to address his request and “effectively operated to subvert” a court order that said his rescission letter must be accepted, a state appeals court has ruled.

John Joyce's rescission request, made less than a year after his 2011 retirement, must be accepted, even though the Department of Education's chancellor had eventually denied the request, an Appellate Division, First Department, panel ruled.

The unanimous panel explained in its opinion that both the department's nearly four-year delay and its apparent ignoring of a 2013 court in the disputed matter meant that Joyce's rescission request must be accepted.

“We find that good faith and fairness demand that a decision on a request for rescission of resignation pursuant to Chancellor's Regulation C-205(29) be made within a reasonable time,” the panel, composed of Justices Rosalyn Richter, Sallie Manzanet-Daniels, Barbara Kapnick, Ellen Gesmer and Jeffrey Oing, wrote.

The justices also said that they “reject respondents' suggestion that the Chancellor has the discretion to wait more than three years before making such a decision, without providing a reason for the delay.”

They also wrote that the Manhattan Supreme Court, in 2013, had directed the department “to follow its own stated procedure by accepting the rescission letter and reinstating petitioner (subject only to the Chancellor's approval, pursuant to the regulation).”

The Department of Education's delay, after the Supreme Court's directive, “was unacceptably long and effectively operated to subvert the court's order,” the justices wrote.

The city Law Department, which represented the Department of Education and related parties, declined to comment on the First Department's decision.

The panel's opinion affirmed the 2017 decision of Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Manuel Mendez, who had both vacated the department's 2016 denial of Joyce's request and directed the department to accept the request.

In its Feb. 19 opinion, the panel explained that in 2011, Joyce had resigned from employment as a tenured social studies teacher. The First Department decision did not name the school at which he'd worked.

Less than a year later, Joyce submitted a request to rescind his resignation, the panel said.

Following a nearly four-year delay in acting on Joyce's request, and following litigation between the parties that included Joyce filing a motion for contempt, the schools chancellor finally responded to and denied the request while “cit[ing Joyce's] unsatisfactory year-end performance rating for the 2010-2011 academic year,” according to the court.

The panel noted that the performance rating was later annulled by the First Department in a 2018 decision.

Benjamin Dictor of Eisner & Dictor in Manhattan, counsel to Joyce, said Monday that the panel's decision represents “a long overdue outcome for Mr. Joyce.”

“We expect immediate compliance from the Department of Education with the decision,” he said.

He added, “I think the record of this case shows what the Department of Education has failed to abide by its own rules and procedures as well as the directive of the [Supreme] Court.”