Judge says Cuomo's prison COVID-19 vaccine policies were "arbitrary and capricious"

A judge ordered New York to offer COVID-19 vaccines to people incarcerated in state jails and prisons after a lawsuit argued that Governor Andrew Cuomo and the state's health commissioner had unfairly denied prisoners access to the vaccine.

The judge's decision ends a nearly two-month dispute after prisoners sued Cuomo and the state's Commissioner of Health, Howard Zucker, to request access to the vaccine. Even as jail and prison workers were prioritized for vaccine access this winter, the lawsuit argued that incarcerated people were unfairly blocked from being inoculated.  In a Monday ruling that ordered the state to offer prisoners access to the vaccine, Justice Alison Y. Tuitt wrote that the inmates' exclusion from vaccine access was "by definition arbitrary and capricious." She added, "There is no acceptable excuse for this deliberate exclusion."