Judging Freedom - NY Supreme Court judge says NYC COVID vaccine mandate unconstitutional.

Episode Date: October 26, 2022

Hi, everyone. Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Wednesday, October 26, 2022. It's about 1045 in the morning here on the east coast of the United States. Yesterday, a justice of the Supreme Court of the United States yesterday, a justice of the Supreme Court of the state of New York, which is the trial court, and in most states the Supreme Court is the highest court in New York, their terminology refers to the trial court as the Supreme Court. So a justice of the Supreme Court, a single judge in the trial court of the state of New York, invalidated orders by the mayor of New York City and the health department of New York City requiring city employees to be vaccinated. And he ordered those,

he ordered the city to rehire the people that fired and pay them their back pay. Wow. So what is this all about? So the mayor of the city of New York and the health department ordered that all city employees and all private employees in the city be vaccinated against COVID. That put the burden on private employers. I myself was an employee of one of those private employers, Fox News at the time. That put the burden on private employers to force their employees to get vaccinated or to fire them, and many employers did that. It also put the burden on the government to fire police, fire, EMS, and sanitation workers. The core functions of city government, police, fire, emergency medical services, and sanitation to fire those who would not take the vaccine. In the midst of all this, the mayor issued an exemption to his orders for

athletes, performers, artists, and musicians. This, of course, rubbed the police, fire, EMS, and sanitation workers the wrong way. Why are they getting an exemption when we're not? All of this came before a New York State Supreme Court justice in the past month and a half, and yesterday he ruled, after hearing medical testimony and legal arguments, that the purpose of the vaccine is not that the vaccine does not prevent the spread of COVID and it does not prevent you from getting COVID. It just lessens the effect of COVID if you get it. And if it's just going to lessen the effect of COVID, if you get it, that's a decision you can make for yourself. And exempting some people from this, but imposing it on others was a violation of the equal protection with which government must do its work. And that's required of city and state governments by the 14th Amendment.

To say this differently, this judge, this courageous judge, said that the vaccine mandates in New York City, private and public, though we're just dealing about public here, were not about public health and safety, but were about control. And therefore, he invalidated those mandates and ordered the city to hire back the police officers, the firefighters, the EMS folks who work on the fire department in New York, and the sanitation workers who had been fired for the failure to take the vaccine. This is a tremendous victory for personal liberty over government force. However, I believe that rejoicing will be short-lived because the city, of course, will appeal this decision to the intermediate appellate Court called the Appellate Division, and that court has ruled on similar appeals, not this very same one, not this rationale, but other appeals, and that has always

and consistently ruled in favor of the government. So we'll see where this goes. Myself, I think it's crazy to fire cops and firefighters and EMS and sanitation workers. These are the core functions that city governments perform. This is why we have governments and to lessen their effectiveness because they don't want to take care of their own health, not other people's health, their own, in my view, is insane. We'll see where this goes. Short-lived rejoicing, but maybe in the long run, personal liberty will prevail. More as we get it. Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom.