NYC mayor allows unvaccinated athletes play home games

NEW YORK (AP) — New York City's mayor exempted athletes and performers from the city’s vaccine mandate following weeks of pressure from the sports world after the rule kept Brooklyn Nets star Kyrie Irving from playing in home games and was expected to block several baseball players from taking the field in their upcoming season.

Mayor Eric Adams, speaking at Citi Field where the Mets play, said Thursday that he had signed the order. The exemption was effective immediately.

“I’m going to make some tough choices. People are not going to agree with some of them.” Adams said. “I must move this city forward.”

Adams contended that making the athletes and performers exempt was important for the city’s economic recovery, saying “players attract people to the stadium.”

The city’s sweeping vaccine mandate for workers will still apply to people with other types of jobs, including private workers and government employees. Critics of the mayor's decision, including several public employee unions whose members were fired for refusing to get vaccinated, blasted the mayor for seeming to lift the rule only for wealthy and famous athletes.

The Municipal Labor Committee, an umbrella group of unions that together represent about 350,000 city workers, said the city should offer a way for fired workers to get their jobs back.

“There can’t be one system for the elite and another for the essential workers of our city. We stand ready to work out the details with the mayor, as we have been throughout this process,” the group's chair Harry Nespolli said.

The city's largest police union, which has sued the city over the mandate, said its officers “don’t deserve to be treated like second-class citizens.”

“We have been suing the city for months...