It would appear that at least in the U.S., courts are now more receptive than ever to arguments about the pandemic. Underscoring this point, amazing news broke Tuesday, New York’s Richmond County Supreme Court ordered workers who’d been fired for being unvaccinated to be reinstated — with back pay — explaining “Being vaccinated does not prevent an individual from contracting or transmitting Covid-19,” and adding that the mandates were really more about compliance than public health.

First off, the Court found that the City’s shot mandate was irrational, because employees were allowed to keeping working right up until they were terminated:
Quoting the court, “All but one of the Petitioners applied for exemptions from the mandate. They received vague and generalized denials. During that time their exemptions were being processed, they remained unvaccinated. There was no reason they could not continue to submit to testing and continue to fulfill their duties as public employees. There was no reason the City of New York could not continue with a vaccinate or test policy… the vaccination mandate for public and private employees is arbitrary and capricious.”

Next the Court observed what a lot of critics of the way government has handled things have been saying from the beginning, the simple fact that “emergencies” are by definition TEMPORARY and short-lived and not be stretched out into eternity and beyond!

Quoting the court “States of emergency are meant to be temporary. The question presented is whether the Health Commissioner has the authority to enact a permanent condition of employment during a state of emergency. This Court finds the Health Commissioner does not have that authority and … the Petitioners herein should not have been terminated for their failure to comply with the Commissioner’s Order during a temporary state of emergency.”

Next off the Court weighed in on the feasibility & sensibility of mandates, noting that the mandates don’t make any sense because the injections don’t protect other workers, since they don’t prevent transmission of the virus.

Quoting the court, “Being vaccinated does not prevent an individual from contracting or transmitting Covid-19. As of the day of this Decision, CDC guidelines regarding quarantine and isolation are the same for vaccinated and unvaccinated individuals. The Petitioners should not have been terminated for choosing not to protect themselves.”
Finally, the Court shredded any remaining justification for the mandate’s in the first place as a “safety matter”, noting that the mandates have never made sense as an issue of “safety:”

Quoting the court, “The vaccination mandate for City employees was not just about safety and public health; it was about compliance. If it was about safety and public health, unvaccinated workers would have been placed on leave the moment the order was issued. If it was about safety and public health, the Health Commissioner would have issued city-wide mandates for vaccination for all residents… we shouldn’t be penalizing people who showed up to work, at great risk to themselves and their families, while we were locked down. If it was about safety and public health, no one would be exempt. It’s time for the City of New York to do what is right and what is just… The terminated Petitioners are hereby reinstated to their full employment status, effective October 25, 2022, at 6:00AM.”

Every time another decision like this comes down, it creates precedence, and the body of available case law grows. With each decision handed down, lawyers have more ammunition to use against the mandates. These decisions while being important in addressing the injustice of what has occurred, are equally important in combatting mandated contemplated in the future.

To fully address the root of the problem however, what we ultimately need is for the elimination of vaccine liability protection and putting vaccines on an equal footing with other drugs. If any drug, vaccine or not, injures someone, the manufacturer should compensate that person for their injury, not their fellow taxpayers, through government!

While the original intent behind the vaccine liability shields, which was to encourage companies to make vaccines, without fear of reprisals if & should the vaccine not prove to be 100% safe & effective. Given what we’ve lived through over the past 2 ½ year with manufactures being less than transparent and forthcoming, to me at least it’s time to have a conversation about whether the shields are still needed, about what ‘unanticipated’ problems have arisen due to the shields, and finally about how vaccine injured people have been left “high and dry!”