New York City

The private sector vaccine mandate is lifted. What about the public sector?

New York City Mayor Eric Adams is standing by the COVID-19 requirement – despite being challenged in court.

New York City Mayor Eric Adams receives a booster shot from Health Commissioner Ashwin Vasan.

New York City Mayor Eric Adams receives a booster shot from Health Commissioner Ashwin Vasan. Screenshot/New York City Mayor's Office YouTube

Hours after New York City Mayor Eric Adams announced that the city’s COVID-19 vaccine requirement for private sector workers will end on Nov. 1, critics attacked his decision to keep the vaccine mandate in place for municipal workers and vowed to intensify their legal action on behalf of city workers who were fired after refusing to get vaccinated.

For nearly a year, employees who’ve worked for the city or in private sector jobs like restaurants, hotels and other private businesses have been required to be fully vaccinated against COVID-19. The mandates, which were implemented by then-Mayor Bill de Blasio’s administration, have been highly contentious. While many employees supported it as a protective tool to mitigate the spread of the virus, both mandates have also been dogged by legal challenges. Although the private sector mandate, which applied to about 184,000 businesses, went largely unenforced during the nine months it has been in effect, about 1,700 municipal workers have been dismissed over the past year, including police officers and teachers. One New York City Police Department detective who sued the city over the vaccine mandate will have his case considered by the U.S. Supreme Court.

A handful of elected officials and unions, such as the New York City Police Benevolent Association, the Uniformed Firefighters Association, the Sergeants Benevolent Association and the Detectives’ Endowment Association condemned the mayor’s decision to only roll back restrictions on businesses.

“This announcement is more proof that the vaccine mandate for New York City police officers is arbitrary, capricious and fundamentally irrational,” PBA President Pat Lynch said in a statement. “Now that the city has abandoned any pretense of a public health justification for vaccine mandates, we expect it to settle our pending lawsuits and reinstate with back pay our members who unjustly lost their jobs.”

In a similar vein, Detectives’ Endowment Association President Paul DiGiacomo claimed that the lifted mandate was “irrational pseudoscience” and vowed that the union will be in court Wednesday expecting to have its detectives “who were unjustly cast aside, reinstated and reimbursed.”

Republican Rep. Nicole Malliotakis applauded the decision to roll back the private sector vaccine mandate and urged Adams to immediately rehire all of the city workers who had been fired and to lift all remaining restrictions.

“It’s a double standard to not apply the same to our cops, firefighters, teachers and sanitation workers,” she said in a statement. “As President Biden stated on Sunday, the pandemic is over. Many of our city workers gained immunity while working on the front lines during the pandemic, and with safe and effective therapeutics readily available to treat COVID-19, there is no reason to continue mandating the vaccine.”

So far, the majority of the legal challenges filed against the mandates have failed to garner much success. In April, the U.S. Supreme Court declined getting involved in a lawsuit filed by four New York City public school employees, three of whom have been fired with the fourth having taken extended lead. Other lawsuits have played out in a similar manner, with the exception of a Manhattan judge who ruled that a NYPD Officer Alexander Deletto should be allowed to keep his job after the city denied his request for a religious exemption, according to the New York Post.

Adams announced the changes during a Tuesday morning press conference while also introducing a new campaign to promote COVID-19 boosters this fall, which will help keep the pandemic in the city’s “rearview mirror.” Citing that about 89% of city residents – children included – have now received at least one vaccine dose, Adams said it was time to usher in a new era of flexibility for parents and businesses. Rolling back the mandate on the city’s municipal workforce, however, was currently not “on the radar,” he said.

Students will also no longer need to be vaccinated to participate in sports or other after-school activities.

But when pressed for an explanation for the city ending the private sector mandate and leaving the public one untouched, Adams and New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene Commissioner Ashwin Vasan seemed to avoid offering any specific reasons beyond broad explanations centered on following the latest health guidelines.

“I don’t think anything dealing with COVID makes sense, and there’s no logical pathway of (what) one can do,” Adams said, who rolled his sleeve up a few minutes later to receive a second booster shot. “You make the decisions based on how to keep our city safe, how to keep our employees operating.”

Pressed by reporters, Vasan said the city’s decision to end the mandate should be looked at as part of a larger strategy.

“It’s important not to see these things in isolation, and say, ‘Well, what’s the narrow rationale for this one decision?’ And see it as disconnected from the rest, because we are in the process of transition,” Vasan said. “We are no longer in the emergency phase of the pandemic, but we haven’t yet defined what the new normal looks like, or endemicity, and this is our process of getting there.”

Asked whether the changes will open the city up to legal action, Adams said legal counsel had looked over every decision that they were making.

“We are in complete compliance with the law,” he said.

Lawrence Gostin, an authority on public health and professor at Georgetown Law, said, “Although Adams is rolling back private sector mandates, it should not affect his legal authority to require vaccinations among public sector workers. He is the chief executive of New York and has every right to set reasonable, science-based safety standards for the public workforce. Many public service workers interface with the public, often vulnerable people. Adams has a duty to keep his workforce and the public safe.”

The New York City Council Common-Sense Caucus – which is composed of Republican and moderate Democrats – challenged officials’ reasoning for keeping the municipal worker requirement.

“We asked the health commissioner in our private meeting with him, what’s the rationale for keeping it. He was asked today in a public format what’s the rationale for keeping it,” New York City Council Minority Leader Joe Borelli said in an interview with City & State. “Not only was his answer, I would say, obtuse, but it certainly fell short of an answer strong enough to fire city employees. You really have to have a good reason to fire people.”

Borelli said the Common-Sense Caucus has pressed the administration to roll back the mandate with limited success. In a private meeting with city leaders two weeks ago, he said they also pointed to how the Metropolitan Transportation Authority has operated without a vaccine mandate and not experienced any major interruptions or death tolls.

“It’s good that we urge vaccination, it’s good that the majority of MTA workers are vaccinated … and certainly the pressure helped get that done,” Borelli said. “But now, maybe we shouldn’t be taking such drastic and permanent steps towards our municipal workforce.”  

Data from the city’s health department showed that the number of people who died or were hospitalized because of COVID-19 has been decreasing for months, yet dozens of New Yorkers are still dying from the virus each week. Alongside the start of a new school year, cases have also ticked up slightly.

Adams acknowledged that another variant could become dominant, which was why the city should remain vigilant even as it takes additional steps to put the virus in the past.

“We just don’t know what’s on the horizon,” he said.

X
This website uses cookies to enhance user experience and to analyze performance and traffic on our website. We also share information about your use of our site with our social media, advertising and analytics partners. Learn More / Do Not Sell My Personal Information
Accept Cookies
X
Cookie Preferences Cookie List

Do Not Sell My Personal Information

When you visit our website, we store cookies on your browser to collect information. The information collected might relate to you, your preferences or your device, and is mostly used to make the site work as you expect it to and to provide a more personalized web experience. However, you can choose not to allow certain types of cookies, which may impact your experience of the site and the services we are able to offer. Click on the different category headings to find out more and change our default settings according to your preference. You cannot opt-out of our First Party Strictly Necessary Cookies as they are deployed in order to ensure the proper functioning of our website (such as prompting the cookie banner and remembering your settings, to log into your account, to redirect you when you log out, etc.). For more information about the First and Third Party Cookies used please follow this link.

Allow All Cookies

Manage Consent Preferences

Strictly Necessary Cookies - Always Active

We do not allow you to opt-out of our certain cookies, as they are necessary to ensure the proper functioning of our website (such as prompting our cookie banner and remembering your privacy choices) and/or to monitor site performance. These cookies are not used in a way that constitutes a “sale” of your data under the CCPA. You can set your browser to block or alert you about these cookies, but some parts of the site will not work as intended if you do so. You can usually find these settings in the Options or Preferences menu of your browser. Visit www.allaboutcookies.org to learn more.

Sale of Personal Data, Targeting & Social Media Cookies

Under the California Consumer Privacy Act, you have the right to opt-out of the sale of your personal information to third parties. These cookies collect information for analytics and to personalize your experience with targeted ads. You may exercise your right to opt out of the sale of personal information by using this toggle switch. If you opt out we will not be able to offer you personalised ads and will not hand over your personal information to any third parties. Additionally, you may contact our legal department for further clarification about your rights as a California consumer by using this Exercise My Rights link

If you have enabled privacy controls on your browser (such as a plugin), we have to take that as a valid request to opt-out. Therefore we would not be able to track your activity through the web. This may affect our ability to personalize ads according to your preferences.

Targeting cookies may be set through our site by our advertising partners. They may be used by those companies to build a profile of your interests and show you relevant adverts on other sites. They do not store directly personal information, but are based on uniquely identifying your browser and internet device. If you do not allow these cookies, you will experience less targeted advertising.

Social media cookies are set by a range of social media services that we have added to the site to enable you to share our content with your friends and networks. They are capable of tracking your browser across other sites and building up a profile of your interests. This may impact the content and messages you see on other websites you visit. If you do not allow these cookies you may not be able to use or see these sharing tools.

If you want to opt out of all of our lead reports and lists, please submit a privacy request at our Do Not Sell page.

Save Settings
Cookie Preferences Cookie List

Cookie List

A cookie is a small piece of data (text file) that a website – when visited by a user – asks your browser to store on your device in order to remember information about you, such as your language preference or login information. Those cookies are set by us and called first-party cookies. We also use third-party cookies – which are cookies from a domain different than the domain of the website you are visiting – for our advertising and marketing efforts. More specifically, we use cookies and other tracking technologies for the following purposes:

Strictly Necessary Cookies

We do not allow you to opt-out of our certain cookies, as they are necessary to ensure the proper functioning of our website (such as prompting our cookie banner and remembering your privacy choices) and/or to monitor site performance. These cookies are not used in a way that constitutes a “sale” of your data under the CCPA. You can set your browser to block or alert you about these cookies, but some parts of the site will not work as intended if you do so. You can usually find these settings in the Options or Preferences menu of your browser. Visit www.allaboutcookies.org to learn more.

Functional Cookies

We do not allow you to opt-out of our certain cookies, as they are necessary to ensure the proper functioning of our website (such as prompting our cookie banner and remembering your privacy choices) and/or to monitor site performance. These cookies are not used in a way that constitutes a “sale” of your data under the CCPA. You can set your browser to block or alert you about these cookies, but some parts of the site will not work as intended if you do so. You can usually find these settings in the Options or Preferences menu of your browser. Visit www.allaboutcookies.org to learn more.

Performance Cookies

We do not allow you to opt-out of our certain cookies, as they are necessary to ensure the proper functioning of our website (such as prompting our cookie banner and remembering your privacy choices) and/or to monitor site performance. These cookies are not used in a way that constitutes a “sale” of your data under the CCPA. You can set your browser to block or alert you about these cookies, but some parts of the site will not work as intended if you do so. You can usually find these settings in the Options or Preferences menu of your browser. Visit www.allaboutcookies.org to learn more.

Sale of Personal Data

We also use cookies to personalize your experience on our websites, including by determining the most relevant content and advertisements to show you, and to monitor site traffic and performance, so that we may improve our websites and your experience. You may opt out of our use of such cookies (and the associated “sale” of your Personal Information) by using this toggle switch. You will still see some advertising, regardless of your selection. Because we do not track you across different devices, browsers and GEMG properties, your selection will take effect only on this browser, this device and this website.

Social Media Cookies

We also use cookies to personalize your experience on our websites, including by determining the most relevant content and advertisements to show you, and to monitor site traffic and performance, so that we may improve our websites and your experience. You may opt out of our use of such cookies (and the associated “sale” of your Personal Information) by using this toggle switch. You will still see some advertising, regardless of your selection. Because we do not track you across different devices, browsers and GEMG properties, your selection will take effect only on this browser, this device and this website.

Targeting Cookies

We also use cookies to personalize your experience on our websites, including by determining the most relevant content and advertisements to show you, and to monitor site traffic and performance, so that we may improve our websites and your experience. You may opt out of our use of such cookies (and the associated “sale” of your Personal Information) by using this toggle switch. You will still see some advertising, regardless of your selection. Because we do not track you across different devices, browsers and GEMG properties, your selection will take effect only on this browser, this device and this website.