It’s time to see how reliable the New York judicial system is, as a group of business and restaurant owners file suit against New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio over his requirement that all people working at, or frequenting, city eateries, gyms, movie theatres, entertainment venues, and numerous other establishments must show proof of so-called “vaccination” or suffer fines, license-revocation, and possible jail time.
Priscilla DeGregory and Julia Marsh report for the New York Post:
The businesses argue that the mandate violates their constitutional rights and unfairly targets certain establishments but not others like churches, grocery stores, schools, offices and medical facilities, the lawsuit filed Tuesday in Staten Island Supreme Court alleges.
Because, as we all know, this virus can take over places like restaurants and gyms, but it’s afraid of Wall Street offices and grocery stores.
De Blasio is one of many leftists who has intimated or outright said that government “enticements” to get people to accept the experimental mRNA injections are not working, and that the “stick” of mandates is necessary. Of course, like so many of these authoritarians, de Blasio has not yet decided to mandate the jabs on individual citizens. That would be a big legal and political morass from which he might never escape. Instead, he has used the threat of pulling business “licenses” to force entrepreneurs to demand such “proof-of-jab” papers from employees and customers.
Few people question the claimed legitimacy of government licensing. But now, perhaps, more will.
At the time, de Blasio called his threat to businesses, employees, and customers the “Key to NYC Pass,” and he had the gall to say:
If you want to participate in society fully, you’ve got to get vaccinated.
This, despite the fact that the mRNA jabs aren’t technically vaccines, they don’t stop transmission of COVID19, and, even if they did, based on de Blasio’s assumption, each person gets jabbed for his or her own protection.
In addition to the suit defining de Blasio’s mandate as “arbitrary and capricious” the NY Posts observes that:
The mandate also doesn’t accommodate certain exceptions for getting vaccinated such as those who’ve already gotten the virus; those who are allergic to ingredients in the vaccine; those who have pre-existing conditions that make getting the vaccine risky; and those whose religious beliefs stop them from getting it, the filing argues.
‘The decision to get the vaccine should ultimately lie with the individual and his doctor, who knows that persons’ complete medical history, rather than a politician,’ the court papers claim.
Why this is so hard for de Blasio to grasp is a towering mystery.
Likewise, how de Blasio either cannot recognize, or refuses to acknowledge, the numerous ways his order breaches the US Constitution is equally befuddling.
Since, as I have noted for MRCTV, lockdowns and orders such as these are clear infringements of the Contract Clause of the US Constitution, since they require detailed information to be handed to the government without court warrants, contrary to the Fourth Amendment, since they allow the government to punish people without proper trial, contrary to the Sixth and Eighth Amendments – it would seem glaringly obvious that de Blasio should have gotten his hands out of the burger basket and put them on the document he swore to uphold
The mandate also threatens people’s livelihoods, making it ‘impossible for anyone who chooses not to be vaccinated for whatever reason, to work in the designated industries,’ the court papers claim.
Now, it is up to the NY court system, and, likely, the higher courts as either side appeals whatever ruling is offered, to decide.
Which isn’t supremely reassuring, since citizens who are harassed by people in one branch of the government are forced to appear to another branch of government to decide if the government is in the wrong.
Sounds like a stacked deck, if there ever was one.
And the courts had best hurry. As the NY Post reports:
As part of the vaccination requirement, called the Key to NYC, the city will begin issuing fines to indoor establishments that don’t enforce the vaccine mandate beginning on Sept. 13. First-offense fines will be $1,000 and second-offense fines will be $2,000.
Curiously, not far from de Blasio’s expensive City Hall, the Statue of Liberty displays a plaque containing the 1883 poem, “The New Colossus”, by Emma Lazarus. In part, it reads:
"Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door…”
From requiring business licenses, to issuing mask mandates, to lockdowns, to his new jab-pass edicts, New York Mayor Bill de Blasio insults every tenet of freedom that the poem embraces.
If any court adheres to a semblance of the US Constitution, he will see his latest mandate defeated in prompt fashion.
Related: WATCH: NYC Mayor de Blasio Overwhelmingly Booed at 4th of July Hot Dog Eating Contest