A New York State judge has ordered city officials to reinstate and hand back pay to more than 1,000 employees who lost their job for refusing the COVID jab.
Staten Island Supreme Court Justice Ralph Porzio wrote in his decision Monday night that the city’s vaccine mandate was enacted illegally last year and is unconstitutional.
As a result of the mandate, more than 1,750 city workers were fired for refusing to get vaccinated, including 850 teachers and classroom aides who were axed just last month.
But under Porzio’s ruling, all of the fired employees were due to be reinstated to their full employment as of 6am Tuesday and are entitled to back pay in salary from the date they were terminated.
The city’s Legal Department, though, has said it is already appealing the decision, which a spokesman says ‘conflicts with numerous other rulings already upholding the mandate.’
Staten Island Supreme Court Justice Ralph Porzio ordered city officials to reinstate and hand back pay to more than 1,000 employees who lost their job for refusing the COVID jab
The decision comes in response to a lawsuit filed earlier this year by 16 former Sanitation Department workers who were fired in February for refusing to get the jab including Adam Bianco, left, and Patricia Buccellato, right
In his ruling on Monday, Porzio wrote that former city Health Commissioner David Choksi’s October 20, 2021 vaccine mandate ‘violates the separation of powers doctrine’ enshrined in the United States Constitution.
He then went on to slam Choksi for implementing the mandate, despite not having the ‘power and authority to permanently exclude [employees] from the workplace.
Porzio specifically hit out at former city Health Commissioner David Choksi, saying he overstepped his authority by enacting the vaccine mandate
‘Though the Board of Health has the power to regulate vaccinations and adopt measures to reduce the spread of infectious diseases… the Board of Health does not have the authority to unilaterally and indefinitely change the terms of employment for any agency.’
Porzio determined that the mandate violated the workers’ ‘substantive and procedural due process rights.
And in general, Porzio ruled, Choksi’s order, another that extended the mandate to private employers and an executive order issued by Eric Adams excluding athletes and performers from the mandate were ‘arbitrary and capricious.
‘The vaccination mandate for city employees was not about safety and public health; it was about compliance,’ he wrote in his 13-page decision.
‘If it was about safety and public health, unvaccinated workers would have been placed on leave the moment the order was issued,’ Porzio continued.
‘If it was about safety and public health, the Health Commissioner would have issued city-wide mandates for all residents.’
Porzio added that the city could have simply continued with its test-or-vaccinate policy rather than force everyone to be vaccinated, noting that nearly 80 percent of city residents were already jabbed at the time.
And, Porzio said, ‘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.’
Porzio also deemed an executive order enacted under Mayor Eric Adams that barred performers and athletes from the mandate ‘arbitrary and capricious’
The decision comes in response to a lawsuit filed earlier this year by 16 former Sanitation Department workers who were fired in February for refusing to get the jab.
They ‘all claim and provided laboratory documentation that they have natural immunity to COVID-19 from prior infections,’ according to the ruling, and even received a letter in June saying they could get their jobs back if they were willing to comply with the mandate.
But, Porzio said, the pandemic has proved that the immunity provided by the mRNA vaccines are ‘not absolute,’ with breakout infections occurring ‘even for those who have ben vaccinated and boosted.’
He noted, however, that his ruling ‘is not a commentary on the efficacy of vaccination, but how we are treating our first responders, the ones who worked day-to-day through the height of the pandemic.
‘They worked without protective gear. They were infected with COVID-19, creating natural immunity.
‘They continued working full duty while their exemption requests were pending,’ Porzio continued. ‘They were terminated and are willing to come back to work for the City that cast them aside.’
DailyMail.com has reached out to the Adams administration and the fired employees named in the lawsuit for comment.
But a spokesperson for the Law Department told the New York Post it is already appealing Porzio’s decision.
‘The city strongly disagrees with this ruling, as this mandate is firmly grounded in law and is critical to New Yorkers’ public health.
‘We have already filed an appeal,’ the spokesperson noted. ‘In the meantime, the mandate remains in place as this ruling pertains solely to the individual petitioners in this case.
‘We continue to review the court’s decision, which conflicts with numerous other rulings already upholding the mandate.’
Dozens of protesters march across the Brooklyn Bridge last fall denouncing the vaccine mandate which went into effect
Protests against the vaccine mandate were widespread before it went into effect last year
The decision comes one year after municipal workers in all departments protested the vaccine mandate before it went into effect.
Dozens of teachers held signs that read ‘Resist medical tyranny!’ and ‘My body, my choice’ in front of a Department of Education building in downtown Brooklyn last October.
One protester even held a sign comparing anti-mandate demonstrators to Rosa Parks, the civil rights icon who refused to sit in the back of the bus in the segregated South in the mid-1950s.
And after more education jobs were lost last month, Rachelle Garcia told The Post how she had worked as a school teacher in Brooklyn for 15 years including in-person during the pandemic.
Garcia refused to get vaccinated and took leave after her requests for a religious exemption were denied.
‘I really put my eggs in one basket, hoping and praying that at the last minute our mayor would turn everything around in time for me to go back to work,’ she said.
‘I’m angry, I’m hurt, to be cast aside like I was nothing. Because I couldn’t give a proper goodbye to my students, other teachers told me they kept asking, “When is Ms. Garcia coming back?” That made me cry so much.’