Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) celebrated Tuesday’s court victory for New York City’s unvaccinated employees who lost their jobs due to vaccine mandates, reiterating that no one should ever have to choose between “a job and a jab.”

“The NY Supreme Court struck down the COVID regime’s vaccine mandates and ordered the reinstatement of unvaxxed employees with back pay,” DeSantis said. “In Florida, no one had to choose between a job and a jab – I’m glad it’s finally like that in New York.”

DeSantis press secretary Bryan Griffin reiterated those sentiments.

“The New York Supreme Court finds that the lockdown left’s vaccine mandates were ‘about compliance’ and being vaccinated ‘does not prevent an individual from contracting or transmitting COVID-19,'” he said, thanking the governor for “shielding” Floridians from the “compliance regime.”

A New York judge issued the ruling on Tuesday, stating that New York City employees who were fired due to not complying with the coronavirus vaccine mandate must be reinstated and receive back pay.

This topic remained the crux of a massive debate in 2021 after the city required all city employees, including first responders, to comply with the mandate or face losing their jobs. As Breitbart News reported, the city was “rejecting requests for religious exemptions, such as from pro-life employees who objected to the vaccine because stem cell lines from aborted children were used in the vaccines’ development.”

At the time, former Mayor Bill de Blasio (D) even bragged that thousands of city workers would ultimately be denied their requests for exemptions from the mandate. 

“I think you’ll see a number of people ultimately find that the exemption is not approved, and then they still have that chance to correct, get vaccinated, come back,” he said at the time, continuing to demonize those who refused to comply. 

However, on Tuesday a judge ruled these terminations were illegal. 

As Breitbart News reported:

Justice Ralph Porzio of the New York Supreme Court in Staten Island held that these terminations are illegal. (The name is misleading, because in New York’s court system, the lowest level of general jurisdiction courts is called the supreme court. It is simply the county court that conducts trials.) Specifically, Porzio held that the mandate is unconstitutional — for several reasons.

Porzio wrote that “we shouldn’t be penalizing the people who showed up to work, at great risk to themselves and their families, while we were locked down.”

According to the 13-page decision, New York City Health Commissioner David Chokshi’s vaccine mandate “violates the separation of powers doctrine” in the New York Constitution, and well as violating city workers’ “substantive and procedural due process rights.” The commissioner had no “power and authority to permanently exclude [those employees] from their workplace.”

Judge Porzio concluded, “The vaccine mandate for City employees was not just about safety and public health; it was about compliance.”