PUSHBACK: Judge blocks Michelle Wu’s Boston employee vaccine mandate, orders injunction.
An appellate judge has ruled against Mayor Michelle Wu, indefinitely extending the court-ordered pause on enforcement of Boston’s employee coronavirus vaccine mandate as the public-safety unions further prevailed in a lawsuit against the city.
Massachusetts Appeals Court Association Justice Sabita Singh issued the order on Tuesday, overturning a lower-court judge’s decision to let Wu go ahead with disciplining city workers who didn’t get the shot.
“Given the limited harm to the city and the public health interest it seeks to promote, and the substantial harm likely to be sustained by the unions in the absence of an injunction, the balance of harms favors the issuance of an injunction to preserve the status quo, in view of the unions’ likelihood of success on the merits,” Singh wrote.
She added that “an injunction would avoid the risk of loss of essential public employees, a harm suffered by the unions and the public alike.”
This stems from a lawsuit filed by the International Fire Fighters Association Local 718, Boston Police Superior Officers Federation and Boston Police Detectives Benevolent Society against the mandate Wu announced in December. As the omicron variant surged, the mayor rolled out a policy that all municipal workers would need to get one shot of the vaccine by Jan. 15 or face discipline — up to firing.
But the unions argued that Wu didn’t have the authority to override the memoranda of agreement they’d signed with the city in the fall under a previous vax-or-test rule, and that this new requirement doesn’t have the same urgency as the city was claiming.
“The employees represented by the unions — members of the police and fire departments — ‘are vital to the City,’ as the motion judge noted,” Singh wrote, citing the lower-court judge’s comments that were complimentary of the first responders.
After a January hearing days before enforcement was due to begin — and as the omicron-driven surge was right around all-time highs — Superior Court Judge Jeffrey Locke said that the unions’ collective-bargaining arguments likely had a leg to stand on, but that he wouldn’t rule on that at the time, and he ultimately said he would not enjoin the city from taking action during a public-health emergency.
The Boston Police Superior Officers Federation said Tuesday’s decision is “a thoughtful and independent review of the facts and the law.”
I sense a change in the weather. Something’s happening here. Storm warning and it looks like rain.