RADIO CITY REBELS
‘Hell no we won’t vax!’ Fired workers sue Dolan
A group of Radio City Music Hall workers has kicked James Dolan in the chin with a lawsuit — accusing the entertainment mogul of firing them for not complying with an “unnecessary, draconian” COVID vaccination mandate, The Post has learned.
The five backstage employees accused Dolanowned Madison Square Garden Entertainment — which runs the famed venue where the Rockettes put on their holiday spectacular — of refusing to accept their “sincere religious and medical objections to the vaccine,” according to documents filed in New Jersey federal court this week.
Dolan, who also owns the Knicks and Rangers, is already facing legal revolts from other parts of his entertainment and sports empire. He faces multiple lawsuits for his use of facial recognition technology to ban legal critics at venues that include Radio City and Madison Square Garden, as well as a shareholder lawsuit over MSGE’s $900 million acquisition of MSG Networks.
The latest legal fight over the contentious issue of vaccine mandates was filed by Stephanie Marra, Donna Holland, Teofesta Pusillo, Lourdes Garcia and Kyle Nicholson.
Madison Square Garden and Radio City were among scores of entertainment venues throughout the city that were forced to shut down in the spring of 2020 at the onset of the coronavirus pandemic.
MSGE required all its employees to at least get their first vaccine shot before July 12, 2021, and set a deadline of Aug. 21, 2021, to show proof of having both jabs, the lawsuit said.
All five refused on religious grounds and were shown the exit. Nicholson was terminated on July 12, 2021, while Marra, Pusillo, and Garcia were fired on July 23, 2021, according to legal documents. Holland lost her job on Oct. 15, 2021. Marra, Holland, Pusillo and Garcia — all New Jersey residents — were wardrobe dressers. Nicholson was a stagehand.
‘Disrespect’
“Madison Square Garden Entertainment chose to disregard the rights of its employees, disrespect their deepest beliefs of conscience, and harass anyone who dissented from its vaccine mandate,” Lexis Anderson, a Los Angelesbased attorney who is representing one of the plaintiffs, told The Post.
The lawsuit accused MSGE and MSG Sports — which owns the Knicks and Rangers — of having “disparately applied their mandate” after making “exceptions for certain groups of people,” according to court documents.
The lawsuit specifically cited the Rangers for allowing players to take the ice. The “team was considered fully vaccinated at 85%. This allowed an automatic exemption for players [who] objected to the forced vaccination policy,” the lawsuit stated.
But MSGE workers “were not given the same option.”
An MSGE spokesperson declined to comment.