Sotomayor Lets NYC Vax Mandate for Public Workers Stand

Residents of the Big Apple have plenty to fear these days. Violent crime is one of those things. In fact, it is probably the most important thing. Just this past week, a man was arguing with a woman in a subway station in the Bronx. During the argument, the woman pushed the man into a group of three other men, who slashed his face with an ice pick. An ice pick? I thought those were only used by Victorian-era serial killers and psychopaths in movies. Where does one even get an ice pick these days? Last Friday, a woman who is a contract custodial cleaner was working on a subway platform in Lower Manhattan when a man walked up and for no apparent reason, beyond perhaps mental illness or sheer cruelty struck, her in the face with a metal pipe.

And while these stories from the New York Post highlight the now fact-of-life that residents of Gotham are not safe pretty much anywhere other than their own bathrooms, New Yorkers can take heart since they will be safe from the horrors of COVID-19, thanks to Justice Sonya Sotomayor.

One of Sotomayor’s jobs as one of the Supremes is to rule on emergency issues from New York. According to The Hill, it was in that capacity that she denied a request by some workers in the city’s public sector to block vaccines mandated by their employer. The group was made up of school teachers, law enforcement officers, sanitation workers, and an organization called New Yorkers for Religious Liberty. The group said that the mandate forces workers to choose between employment and violating their religious principles by taking the jab(s). It also alleges that the exemptions that are granted are done so on an arbitrary basis. Sotomayor even broke with protocol on Thursday by rejecting the request outright and eschewing the process of bringing the matter to the full court. In the past, the court has issued denials to similar requests for healthcare workers in Maine, public school teachers in NYC, and a cadre of students at Indiana University.

That Sotomayor would act unilaterally to help New York City enforce a mandate for a vaccine that has been outed as ineffective and has had its safety broadly scrutinized and questioned by people from all levels of society and all walks of life is no surprise. After all, as a wise man once said, people are entitled to all of the government they can pay for. Why a left-leaning justice would help keep the COVID fires burning is also no mystery. But what will remain a mystery is why New Yorkers continue to tolerate a government that insists they take a vaccine that provides the illusion of protection while denying them actual protection from “clear and present” dangers.