In a major repudiation of New York City Mayor Eric Adams and his preposterous, nonsensical vaccine mandates, on Friday a judge threw out the vax requirement for cops and ordered those fired to be reinstated. Last week, Adams announced an end to mask mandates for private employers—but declined to lift the order for city workers. As the NY Post noted wryly at the time, “Apparently, COVID now has the capacity to distinguish between public and private employees.” They report:

In the stunning decision, Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Lyle Frank wrote that the city’s vaccine mandate on the Police Benevolent Association was invalid “to the extent it has been used to impose a new condition of employment” on the union.

The mandate was also invalid because it issued enforcement beyond “monetary sanctions” prescribed in the law, Frank wrote — ordering that all PBA members put on leave or canned be reinstated. [Emphasis mine.]

Hallelujah. Hopefully, the city’s teachers can find similar justice, because as I reported, 850 educators were fired last week for refusing to be injected with mRNA vaccines. These idiotic policies were put in place by former Mayor Bill de Blasio just before he turned over the mayoral reigns to the incoming Eric Adams. Adams had the chance to be a hero and do the right thing—the scientific thing—but proved he’s just another swamp creature with no backbone.

A judge just ruled that NYPD officers can’t be fired for refusing to get the COVID-19 vaccine and ordered those fired officers to be reinstated. A big victory! All COVID vaccine mandates in New York need to go. Everyone fired should be offered their jobs back with backpay. pic.twitter.com/CGlY81Mgia

— Lee Zeldin (@leezeldin) September 23, 2022

The city has already indicated that it will appeal. Why?! What on earth do they have to gain from this? As I reported in August, police officers are already fleeing the Big Apple in droves because of lack of support and nonsensical policies. The vaccines meanwhile have proven to be ineffective at stopping people from getting COVID and transmitting it. Many European countries are forbidding the use of the vaccine for anyone under 50 (why is that, exactly?), and now the one remaining benefit that they’ve been claiming—that the vaccine prevents serious illness and death—is being questioned as well.

Justice Frank said it would be a “gross overstatement” of the city’s Department of Mental Health and Hygiene to say it could enforce the vaccine mandate through termination, unpaid leave, or suspension:

“To be unequivocally clear, this Court does not deny that at the time it was issued the vaccine mandate was appropriate and lawful,” the ruling stated. But the city hadn’t “established a legal basis or lawful authority for the DOH to exclude employees from the workplace and impose any other adverse employment action as an appropriate enforcement mechanism of the vaccine mandate.”

Common sense can prevail; just takes time. This is the right result. What about those who got the phony "vaccines" against their will to keep their jobs? They'll have to live (or die) with the side effects. Hopefully this will end vaccine mandates forever.https://t.co/oSZHAQ4WWB

— Jim Rickards (@JamesGRickards) September 23, 2022

The judge also ruled that any new employment condition of this type would need to be included in a collective bargaining agreement. In other words, unelected officials from the health bureaucracy should no longer be able to throw down sweeping mandates with little oversight.

This is a great smackdown of the overzealous COVID policies so many of us lived through during the pandemic. It’s also a serious blow to the credibility of Mayor Eric Adams, who has shown none of the bravery and rationality many were hoping for as we happily waved goodbye to the erratic Bill de Blasio. Let’s hope this is the start of the end of the era where fanatical, faceless, unelected technocrats ruin our lives with no repercussions.

Are you listening, Los Angeles Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer?