Unvaccinated New York City employees scored a breakthrough Monday when a state Supreme Court justice declared that the city’s vaccination mandate for all employees is arbitrary, capricious, and unconstitutional.
Earlier this year, New York City Democratic Mayor Eric Adams dismissed over 2,000 municipal workers, including police officers and firefighters, who refused to comply with the COVID vaccination mandate.
The court determined that “being vaccinated does not protect an individual from getting or spreading COVID-19,” and that both vaccinated and unvaccinated people are subject to the same quarantine and isolation standards set out by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
“The vaccine mandate for City employees was not only about safety and public health; it was about compliance,” stated Judge Ralph Porzio in his decision. “If it was about safety and public health, unvaccinated workers would have been placed on leave the moment the order was issued.”
Attorney Chad LaVeglia announced the judgement outside the Richmond County Courthouse on Monday, claiming that the judge ruled the Health Commissioner’s directive was illegal and violated the separation of powers.
It’s null and void, essentially,” LaVeglia said in a video on the NYCforYourself Twitter account. “We just defeated the vaccine mandate for every single city employee.”
Employees from the Department of Education, the New York Police Department, the New York Fire Department, and the Department of Corrections, among others, were among those affected.
“For all the brave men and women who have been our first responders and have been brave through all this are now free, and you should be able to go back to work,” he added.
The New York State Supreme Court decided on Monday that all employees fired because of their vaccination status will be restored and paid back for breaching their rights.
President of the FDNY-Firefighters Association Andrew Ansbro and President of the FDNY-Fire Officers Association Lt. James McCarthyt said that their organizations support repealing the municipal officials’ vaccination mandate earlier this year.
Officials from the FDNY Association chastised Mayor Adams earlier this year for exempting sportsmen and artists from the obligation, saying it should have applied to all New Yorkers.
“We support the revocation of the mandate for the athletes and performers that work in New York City,” McCarthy said. “We think that the people that work for New York City should also have the mandate relocated for them.”
Ansbro stated that if Adams repealed the vaccination mandate for certain people, “you need to repeal it for everyone in the city.”
“If you’re gonna follow the science, science is gonna tell you there isn’t any danger right now and putting hundreds of firefighters, police officers, and other emergency workers out of work is not in the city’s best interest. It’s not safe,” Ansbro said.
The court ruled that city workers should not be fired because of their vaccination status or for choosing “not to protect themselves.”
“In a City with a nearly 80% vaccination rate, we shouldn’t be penalizing the people who showed up to work, at great risk to themselves and their families, while we were locked down,” Judge Porzio wrote. “If it was about safety and public health, no one would be exempt.”
“It is time for New York to do what is right and what is just,” Porzio concluded.