A former waitress at Yankees Stadium who refuse to play ball with the Big Apple’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate filed a complaint Thursday against the mayor.
Her complaint, which seeks to become a class-action lawsuit, argues that Mayor Eric Adams‘s order March 24 allowing athletes and performers to be the only workers exempt from getting the COVID-19 vaccine is “arbitrary and capricious” and criticizes the lack of science to back it up. The complaint was submitted on behalf of Virginia Alleyne, the now-fired worker at Yankees Stadium, and “all other Individuals similarly situated” to ask for a declaratory judgment that Adams’s order violates the plaintiffs’ rights and should no longer be enforced unless it applies to all city employees.
“Thousands of firemen, policemen, teachers, sanitation workers, restaurant workers and other private sector workers have been fired as a result of this mandate,” reads the complaint filed in New York court, which was obtained by the Washington Examiner. “Has the mayor asked the aforementioned terminated NYC employees if they care if the Nets, Knicks, Yankees or Mets are at a competitive disadvantage when they can no longer support their families?”
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Alleyne was employed at Yankee Stadium for 17 years as a waitress at the Legends Club and was fired Sept. 12, 2021, because she refused to get vaccinated, according to the complaint. Adams, a Democrat, did not become mayor until the beginning of this year, but he is the one who announced in March that the mandate for unvaccinated athletes and performers had been lifted.
“A small number of people have an outsized impact on our economy,” Adams said at the time.
The lawyer filing the complaint, James Mermigis, told the Washington Examiner the case is intended to exempt all workers from being required to receive the COVID-19 vaccine. Mermigis said he currently has 781 plaintiffs ready to go for the class-action lawsuit, with more expected to join. All of them have lost their jobs, he claimed. The complaint argues that class action “is superior to any other method for the resolution of this dispute.”
The lawsuit also seeks an immediate injunction against the order unless the exemptions are lifted, the payment of legal fees, and “any other such further relief to which Petitioners may be entitled as a matter of law or equity, or which the Court determines to be just and proper.”
A total of 86.6% of New York City’s population has received at least one dose of the COVID-19 vaccine, with 77.8% fully vaccinated. Additionally, 36.9% of residents have received a booster shot, according to NYC Health.
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Adams’s office and the New York Yankees have not yet responded to the Washington Examiner‘s requests for comment.
