A new lawsuit accuses former Mayor Bill de Blasio’s administration of stripping citizens of their “basic liberties” and playing favorites when doling out exemptions to restrictive vaccine mandates during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The 168-page suit, filed earlier this month by a group of City Council members, questions why the 2020 George Floyd protests were allowed to surge for months in the Big Apple, even as small businesses, religious institutions and schools were shuttered.
“NYC residents were lied to about the effectiveness of the lockdown and the vaccine stopping the spread,” the filing in Queens Supreme Court claims.
The suit notes that while hundreds of city workers lost their jobs for not complying with vaccine mandates, Dr. Jay Varma, then the COVID czar, was caught on camera earlier this year confessing to having drug-fueled sex parties mid-pandemic.
The petition was filed Dec. 10 by council members Joanna Ariola (R-Queens), Kristy Marmorato (R-Bronx), Inna Vernikov (R-Brooklyn), Vickie Paladino (R-Queens), David Carr (R-Staten Island) and Robert Holden (D-Queens).
It lays out a series of seemingly contradictory decisions made by the city in the months after the Big Apple’s first COVID-19 case was confirmed on March 1, 2020.
For instance, thousands of non-vaccinated emergency responders were “forced to work” without being properly informed about the virus or given the proper protective gear as protests over the police-involved death of Floyd surged in May and June 2020, the suit alleges.
But months later, when vaccines became available, many of those who refused to get the jab lost their jobs, the filing states.
“The respondents have never explained why the protests were permitted to go forward, but everything else used in daily living was shut down,” the suit argues.
As the mandates began to ease in August, indoor dining was permitted, museums, bowling alleys and other cultural institutes were reopened — but schools remained closed, the lawsuit notes.
Teachers who refused to get a vaccine were suspended without pay and in some cases fired, the suit claims.
“There was no data of any kind to suggest that the Former Mayor’s closing of public schools was based on any scientific evidence. The evidence suggests that the school closures were driven by the needs of the teacher’s union leadership, not the safety of the children,” the suit claims.
It also holds the policies backed by the de Blasio administration responsible for ongoing poor mental health and dipping test scores among public school students who were forced into homeschooling during the pandemic.
The lawsuit notes the alleged “preferential treatment of certain employees and supervisors” such as Varma and police officer Kimberly Lucas, who in May pleaded guilty to submitting a fraudulent vaccine card.
Lucas lost vacation days and was put on a one-year dismissal probation while “thousands of city workers were fired without due process for rejecting the COVID-19 vaccine and being honest about not receiving it,” the suit states.
Then-NYPD Commissioner Edward Caban previously said he mitigated the penalty for Lucas because of her “nine years of exemplary service as a police officer.”
“It appears that these working-class New Yorkers were only fired because they were not wealthy, politically connected, or refused to submit fraudulent vaccine cards,” the suit alleges.
Attorney Jimmy Wagner, who filed the suit on behalf of the six city lawmakers, said the petition does not seek monetary damages, but rather, the plaintiffs aim to get answers from the former administration “in writing” about the pandemic-era mandates to “protect New Yorkers from suffering a similar fate in the future.”
“What happened during the pandemic in New York City was executive tyrannical authority,” he said.
“This is not how our system is supposed to operate. They outcasted anyone who dared question the mandate,” Wagner charged.
A hearing in the case has been set for early February 2025.
A spokesman for the city Law Department spokesman waved off the suit.
“The claims in this suit are baseless. The city’s Covid-19 vaccination mandate was an important measure to protect New Yorkers during an unprecedented health emergency,” the rep said in a statement Tuesday.
“The vaccine mandate and the city’s process for granting religious exemptions and medical accommodations have been upheld by numerous courts.”
