New York City businesses are suing Mayor Bill De Blasio over his vaccine mandate. Businesses are having enough trouble hiring employees and making rent, they don’t have the time or the resources to be checking everyone’s papers like the Stasi. The Daily Mail reports:
New York City business owners are suing Mayor Bill de Blasio over the city’s new ‘arbitrary and capricious’ vaccine requirements that will force them to check the vaccine status of every single indoor customer.
Restaurants and gyms throughout the city argue that the new rules are unfair because they don’t apply to other indoor spaces where people congregate for long periods of time, like grocery stores with long lines or crowded office buildings.
De Blasio’s controversial ‘Key to NYC’ scheme officially kicked off August 17, marking the US’s first rules separating the vaccinated and the unvaccinated in day-to-day life. Cities like New Orleans and San Francisco have since followed suit with similar mandates.
New York’s rules require staff and customers at dining, entertainment and fitness venues to have at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine to enter indoor spaces.
Enforcement of the rules won’t begin for another 25 days, on September 13, when businesses that don’t comply will be subject to fines.
On Wednesday afternoon, fast food restaurants in Manhattan were not yet asking for CDC vaccination cards or Excelsior passes, and the AMC Village 7 movie theater in the East Village said it had not yet begun checking.
According to the lawsuit, ‘there are many other venues that involve groups of ‘unassociated people interacting for a substantial period of time’ such as grocery stores, pharmacies, hair salons, churches, office buildings, schools, healthcare facilities etc. and yet these venues will not require vaccination of all workers and patrons.’
It also says that the mandate makes no exceptions for those who can’t or shouldn’t get the vaccine.
The lawsuit was officially filed Tuesday at 7pm in Richmond County Supreme Court on behalf of a newly formed group called the Independent Restaurant Owners Association Rescue, which includes gyms and dining establishments in the city.
Leading the fight are two Staten Island fitness venues, Evolve-33 and Judo Jujitsu, as well as the Staten Island restaurants Deluca’s Italian Restaurant, Max’s Es-ca, and Rocco’s Brooklyn Bakery. The bakery Pasticceria Rocco, which has locations in Greenwich Village and Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, is also named in the suit.
The bakery’s manager, Mary Josephine Generoso, responded to the mayor’s rules by erecting a huge sign outside of the Bay Ridge location welcoming ‘vaccinated or unvaccinated’ customers into the dining room.
Under the new rules, anyone aged 12 and older must now show proof of vaccination to dine indoors in New York City’s restaurants. If a customer fails to show their vaccine passport, they can only dine outdoors.
And it is restaurant servers and bar staff who must be the public enforcers of the mayor’s new mandate.
Congresswoman Nicole Malliotakis of Staten Island was flanked by local lawmakers and business owners when she announced the lawsuit, led by attorneys Louis Gelormino and Mark Fonte, on August 6.
Action Line: If your city treats your business like it’s part of the government machine, it’s time to fight back, or get out. Find a better America today, start with my Super States.
