Newark, NJ Ditched Its “Vaccine Passport” After I Told the Mayor Nobody Was Enforcing It

I’ll admit to being somewhat surprised by what looks like the partial demise of the “vaccine passport” phenomenon. In just the past few days, Washington, DC, Philadelphia, Seattle, and other cities have moved to drop their policies requiring display of vaccination status as a condition for entry into various venues. At some level, the infrastructure and logic behind the measures remain in place; a number of establishments in the aforementioned cities have already said they’ll continue the checks independently. But it’s true that local governments are progressively dropping the overarching, jurisdiction-wide mandates just a month or two after some went into effect. (One qualifier: that mayors and “public health” bureaucracies ever activated this unprecedented policy mechanism to begin with means it’ll remain available for any future “waves.”)

The development suggests a few things: One, there was likely enough discontent with these measures that even mayors of heavily COVID-conscious Democratic cities felt compelled to ditch them at the earliest opportunity, given the apparent waning of “Omicron.” The mayors certainly had the option of just keeping the measures in perpetuity as generalized “public health” initiatives, and there’s every reason to think they would’ve done so had their constituents sufficiently desired it. Evidently, that desire has been… sapped.

Maybe the elected officials and bureaucrats in question finally brought themselves to begrudgingly acknowledge that there’s virtually no evidence anywhere in the world to suggest vax passport systems have curtailed the spread of the virus. Or maybe the ad hoc, frequently absurd nature of how such requirements are enforced finally strained credulity — with waiters, bartenders, and front-desk clerks having been bizarrely deputized as inoculation inspectors. Totally foolproof system! If you’ve ever undergone one of these checks, you know how simple it is to mock up a fake vax card on your phone and be on your way — most of the time, the inspectors barely give a split-second glance.

One city that instituted a “proof of vaccination” system during the height of “Omicron” frenzy last December was Newark, NJ. Despite being the most populous city in New Jersey, Newark is not a place that gets a ton of external attention — except on occasion when Cory Booker executes a successful PR stunt. (I did previously report on the thousands of citations Newark Police issued during the first COVID stay-at-home order in 2020.) So it flew under the radar that Mayor Ras Baraka’s “vaccine passport” decree was one of the most aggressively expansive anywhere in the country:

You read that right: per the terms set forth in this text, a five year-old must display proof of vaccination in order to enter a library. So how was this highly practical policy going? I took a little trip to Newark this week in order to inquire. Turns out: the whole thing was essentially a farce. Literally none of the “establishments or facilities” I visited at random — around 10, across different parts of the city — were checking vax status, nor did the workers have the faintest clue that they were legally required to be checking vax status. The sole exception was the city’s main library, where a uniformed guard on duty told me he was directly answerable to the mayor. While the guard did half-heartedly check the vax status of aspiring library patrons, he said: “If it was up to me, I’d let everybody in.”

But other than that — coffee shops, bakeries, pizza places, fast food joints, diners, bars — not one I visited was checking vax status, and just a single person I spoke to exhibited the vaguest awareness that checking vax status was obligated by city law. “We’re supposed to, but we haven’t… no one does,” a restaurant worker told me. (I’m not naming any of these locations or individuals on the off-chance that the city suddenly decides to extract some fine revenue for their non-compliance.)

A coffee shop worker told me “we haven’t checked anybody” — at any point. Ever. Not because they were even necessarily unwilling to do so, but because they genuinely did not know about the Mayor’s vaunted Executive Order. No one from the city ever contacted them — no phone calls, visits, texts, nothing. They were just legitimately unaware, and so customers have been free this entire time to ingest lattes and croissants without affirming their vaccination history.

“They’re not enforcing it anywhere. I go everywhere and they’re not enforcing it,” a guy working at a pizza place told me. He initially thought the Executive Order had been rescinded — it hadn’t — but he also thought he was never required to check in the first place. Clearly nobody had bothered explaining the policy to him. Therefore, devastatingly, pizzas had been consumed indoors this entire time absent any mandatory vaccine evaluation.

“No se,” the worker at a Spanish-themed establishment told me. Never any checking done at that particular location, it would appear. Even a vegan restaurant I visited wasn’t checking!

“I have no idea, I’m so confused with all this stuff myself,” a manager at a fast food place told me. “I don’t think they’re going to enforce it, the way they are in New York.” Could this have something to do with the over-abundance of affluent news-consumers in NYC, where vax status does tend to be checked (at least in the affluent areas) — compared to Newark, whose population and resources are not remotely comparable? Could it be that this whole exercise really comes down to functioning as a class-marker among urban liberals? Who’s to say, really. In any event, the “proof of vaccine” requirement in this particular lower-class city was nothing more than a fig leaf.

Earlier this week, I emailed a spokesperson for the Mayor to let them know that compliance with the Executive Order was effectively non-existent, and seek comment. I didn’t name any of the places I visited, so as to assure the workers wouldn’t get in trouble — the spokesperson asked me to do so and I declined. Then the following day I got an additional email: the policy had suddenly been rescinded. Imagine that!

Would the city have gotten rid of its “vaccine passport” system anyway, if I hadn’t inquired? Very possibly. As noted, other cities have increasingly done so. But I would note that Mayor Baraka chose to extend Newark’s mask mandate simultaneously as he ditched the “proof of vaccination” decree, so it’s not like they were desperate to immediately vanquish all remaining COVID regulations. Perhaps nobody had informed the Mayor till now that the implementation of his sternly-worded Order was absolutely farcical — mostly prompting quizzical stares when I queried the people who were ostensibly tasked with enforcing it. Hard to say your proactive public policy action “saved lives” in that context. What a joke!

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