Tag: new york

Watch as NY Business Owners Stand Up to Cuomo’s COVID Restrictions, Chase Agents Out of Building

New York business owners protesting COVID-19 restrictions put in place by Governor Andrew Cuomo confronted and chased away county health department agents after compassionately asking the bureaucrats to leave them alone.

About 100 business owners gathered inside the Athletes Unleashed gym in Orchard Park on Friday night to organize against the new “orange zone” regulations that requires businesses deemed unessential by the state to shut down and limits indoor gatherings to 10 people.

Video from the gathering shows the moment the business owners confronted two officials from the Erie County Department of Health, escorted by sheriff’s deputies, who were attempting to shut down the meeting.

Keep reading

SCOTUS Blocks New York’s COVID-19 Restrictions on Houses of Worship, Saying They Are Not ‘Narrowly Tailored’

The Court has said the First Amendment’s Free Exercise Clause does not require religious exemptions from neutral, generally applicable laws. But it also has said laws are presumptively unconstitutional when they discriminate against religion.

New York’s restrictions “cannot be viewed as neutral because they single out houses of worship for especially harsh treatment,” the majority says. In red zones, businesses deemed “essential”—including supermarkets, convenience stores, hardware stores, pet stores, liquor stores, laundromats, acupuncturists, banks, and various offices—operate without capacity limits. “The disparate treatment is even more striking in an orange zone,” the Court notes. “While attendance at houses of worship is limited to 25 persons, even non-essential businesses may decide for themselves how many persons to admit.”

Keep reading

New York Democratic Leaders Caught Maskless At Private Party Despite COVID Restrictions

Elite New York Democrats attending a Brooklyn private party did not adhere to the state’s coronavirus restrictions, photographs show.

The event was a private birthday party for Carl Scissura, who is the head of the New York Building Congress, a trade organization, the New York Daily News reported Thursday. Other attendees included former Brooklyn Democratic Party Chairman Frank Seddio and Deputy Brooklyn Borough President Ingrid Lewis-Martin, the publication reported.

Photographs of the event showed that very few people wore masks, though the party attendees stood in close proximity to one another as they chatted. One photograph showed both Seddio and Lewis-Martin chatting maskless.

Keep reading

Watch as NY Business Owners Stand Up to Cuomo’s COVID Restrictions, Chase Agents Out of Building

New York business owners protesting COVID-19 restrictions put in place by Governor Andrew Cuomo confronted and chased away county health department agents after compassionately asking the bureaucrats to leave them alone.

About 100 business owners gathered inside the Athletes Unleashed gym in Orchard Park on Friday night to organize against the new “orange zone” regulations that requires businesses deemed unessential by the state to shut down and limits indoor gatherings to 10 people.

Video from the gathering shows the moment the business owners confronted two officials from the Erie County Department of Health, escorted by sheriff’s deputies, who were attempting to shut down the meeting.

Keep reading

De Blasio Unleashes ‘COVID Checkpoints’ To Catch & Fine NYC Travelers Who Violate Holiday Quarantine

As millions of Americans defy the CDC’s warning not to travel for the holiday season, NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio has once again dispatched police to key traffic chokepoints where his quarantine rules will be strictly enforced.

New York City Sheriff Joseph Fucito said the sheriff’s office (a separate entity from the NYPD) will conduct spot checks when out-of-state buses drop riders off at the curb, and will also check cars will out of state and New York licenses plates. Test-and-trace teams will also be on the ground to help direct people to testing sites while providing “education” about quarantine.

New York’s statewide 14-day holiday quarantine mandates that travelers quarantine, or take a test showing they’re negative. Violations of self-quarantine will be enforced, and may carry fines of $1,000 to $2,000, the mayor’s office has said.

Around the US, few jurisdictions have actually enforced quarantine and social distancing rules, though people have been killed in fights spurred by mandatory mask requirements. Some governors, including Kristi Noem in South Dakota, have refused to make wearing masks and other social distancing measures mandatory.

Keep reading

“Get Out! – Go Get a Warrant!” – Business Owners in Buffalo, New York Stand Up to Cuomo’s Covid Orders, Kick Out Sheriff and “Health Inspector”

Business owners in Buffalo, New York fed up with Cuomo’s authoritarian Covid lockdown orders asserted their Constitutional rights and kicked out sheriffs and “health inspectors” on Friday night.

50 business owners gathered inside of a shuttered gym in Buffalo, New York Friday night when two sheriffs and a so-called ‘health inspector’ showed up to harass the group in response to an “anonymous tip.”

The business owners shouted down and kicked out the health inspector and the told the sheriffs to come back with a warrant.

Keep reading

Powerful and connected New York City Democrats break Covid rules because they can.

So now we know you can violate Covid restrictions for mostly peaceful protests, Biden victory celebrations, and birthday parties (what is it about birthday parties?), the latter of which only applies if you are important enough, and if you have to ask if you are important enough, you aren’t.

“Adherence to COVID regulations was checked at the door at a recent birthday party featuring a number of Kings County powerhouses.

Photos of a celebration for Carlo Scissura, head of the powerful construction trade organization New York Building Congress, show revelers in close quarters without masks.

Attendees included Deputy Brooklyn Borough President Ingrid Lewis-Martin and former Brooklyn Democratic Party Chairman Frank Seddio.”

The event occurred just days after Governor Cuomo decreed ever more draconian limitations on your activities. “Take this seriously,” he officiously proclaimed.

Keep reading

State Bar Passes Mandatory COVID-19 Vaccination Recommendation

The New York State Bar Association on Saturday passed a resolution urging the state to consider making it mandatory for all New Yorkers to undergo COVID-19 vaccination when a vaccine becomes available, even if people object to it for “religious, philosophical or personal reasons.”

The resolution, which was passed by a majority of the bar association’s 277-member House of Delegates, includes conditions limiting its scope. Those include that the state government should only consider making vaccinations mandatory if voluntary COVID-19 vaccinations fall short of producing needed levels of population immunity; that an assessment of the health threat to various communities be made so that perhaps the mandate can be targeted; and that a mandate only be considered after there is expert consensus about the vaccine’s safety and efficacy.

In a statement Saturday afternoon, Mary Beth Morrissey, chair of the bar association’s Health Law Section’s Task Force on COVID-19, which in May released a controversial report that had first proposed the idea of a vaccine mandate, said, “The authority of the state to respond to a public health crisis is well-established in constitutional law,”

“In balancing the protection of the public’s health and civil liberties, the Public Health Law recognizes that a person’s health can and does affect others,” said Morrisey, a lawyer who also holds a doctorate degree in gerontological social work research.

The Health Law Section’s May report generated an uproar online, over the spring and summer, among anti-vaccine groups and lawyers who represent people injured by vaccines. But the relevant part of the 83-page report proposing a vaccine mandate was broader in scope, and more direct, than the resolution passed by the bar association Saturday. And most of the conditions contained in the resolution had not been contained in the report.

The report had recommended that it should be mandatory for all Americans to undergo COVID-19 vaccination, despite people’s objections, with the one exception being doctor-ordered medical reasons. There had been no language about a mandate being limited to New York state residents, and no language saying a public recommendation made to the state government should only be for it to “consider” a mandate.

Keep reading

New York Colleges Are Forcing Students to Test Negative for COVID-19 Before Going Home for the Holidays. Is It Legal?

We’ve all seen the reports: college students are especially to blame for spreading coronavirus. Well, the State University of New York (SUNY) college system has taken its role of in loco parentis very seriously.

New York’s public university system is requiring students to test negative for the coronavirus before they can leave to spend Thanksgiving break with their families. Obviously, the measure is being undertaken in hopes of containing the spread of COVID-19 from the college campus to the community at large.

Keep reading

Orthodox Jews Say They’re Being Targeted by New NYC Lockdowns

A group of Orthodox Jewish men gathered Tuesday evening in Brooklyn, burning masks to protest the newest iteration of New York’s pandemic lockdown. Their anger is reasonable, because the newest lockdown—which disproportionately affects the city’s Jewish community and explicitly targets religious gatherings—is not. It is deeply stupid and unfair, exactly the sort of easily avoidable government overreach that makes even well-intended people doing their best to mitigate the spread of COVID-19 understandably skeptical of public health directives.

At issue is New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s “Cluster Action Initiative,” implemented at the request of New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio and announced several hours before the fire. The program identifies infection clusters—areas with positive test rates above 3 percent for seven consecutive days—and imposes a graduated system of restrictions until the rate drops.

In the strictest rule set, the “red zone,” schools along with businesses deemed nonessential are closed. In-person dining is banned. Houses of worship are limited to gatherings of 25 percent capacity or 10 people, whichever is smaller, with $15,000 fines for violations. In fact, as Cuomo said Tuesday in a line sure to appear in forthcoming First Amendment litigation, religious gatherings are the main target: “The new rules are most impactful on houses of worship,” he declared. “This virus is not coming from nonessential business.” (Then why, one wonders, are those businesses required to close?)

Keep reading