A New York state Supreme Court judge has ordered that city workers who were fired in for refusing to comply with a vaccine mandate must be reinstated and receive back pay.
Judge Ralph Porzio said in a ruling issued on Monday that a city-wide order requiring workers be vaccinated was “capricious and arbitrary” and had violated the state’s separation of powers doctrine.
“It is time for the City of New York to do what is right and what is just,” Judge Porzio said.
The order stemmed from a lawsuit filed by 16 employees of the New York City Department of Sanitation who were fired in February for failing to comply with a vaccine mandate.
The order will also apply to the more than 1,400 city workers, including hundreds of police officers, firefighters and education department employees, who lost their jobs.
“We just defeated the vaccine mandate for every single city employee,” Chad Laveglia, an attorney representing the sanitation workers, said in a statement soon after the court ruling was released.
“It’s null and void.”
Republican gubernatorial candidate Lee Zeldin said it was a “100 per cent correct and just ruling” in a Twitter post.
“Nobody should lose their job over the personal decision whether or not to get the COVID shot.”
Judge Porzio’s 12-page ruling was highly critical of former Mayor Bill de Blasio’s order to require city workers to have had two doses of the Pfizer or Moderna vaccine, which was later extended to private employers.
“There is nothing in the record to support the rationality of keeping a vaccination mandate for public employees, while vacating the mandate for private sector employees or creating a carveout for certain professions, like athletes, artists and performers,” the judge wrote.
“This is clearly an arbitrary and capricious action because we are dealing with identical unvaccinated people being treated differently by the same administrative agency.”
Judge Porzio wrote that vaccination rates in New York had nearly reached 80 per cent, and that “we shouldn’t be penalising the people who showed up to work, at great risk to themselves and their families, while we were locked down”.
In March, New York City Mayor Eric Adams faced criticism for allowing unvaccinated athletes to play home games while the ban on unvaccinated city workers was still in force.
