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As a subscriber you can listen to articles at work, in the car, or while you work out. Subscribe NowA federal judge threw out a lawsuit filed by employees of a Houston hospital system over its requirement that all of its staff be vaccinated against COVID-19.
The Houston Methodist Hospital system suspended 178 employees without pay last week over their refusal to get vaccinated. Of them, 117 sued seeking to overturn the requirement and over their suspension and threatened termination.
In a scathing ruling Saturday, U.S. District Judge Lynn Hughes of Houston deemed lead plaintiff Jennifer Bridges’ contention that the vaccines are “experimental and dangerous” to be false and otherwise irrelevant. He also found that her likening the vaccination requirement to the Nazis’ forced medical experimentation on concentration camp captives during the Holocaust to be “reprehensible.”
Hughes also ruled that making vaccinations a condition of employment was not coercion, as Bridges contended.
“Bridges can freely choose to accept or refuse a COVID-19 vaccine; however, if she refuses, she will simply need to work somewhere else. If a worker refuses an assignment, changed office, earlier start time, or other directive, he may be properly fired. Every employment includes limits on the worker’s behavior in exchange for remuneration. That is all part of the bargain,” Hughes concluded.
Jared Woodfill, a Houston lawyer representing Bridges and the other clients, promised an appeal.
“All of my clients continue to be committed to fighting this unjust policy,” Woodfill said in a statement. “What is shocking is that many of my clients were on the front line treating COVID-positive patients at Texas Methodist Hospital during the height of the pandemic. As a result, many of them contracted COVID-19. As a thank you for their service and sacrifice, Methodist Hospital awards them a pink slip and sentences them to bankruptcy.”
Employees had a June 7 deadline to complete their immunization.
In a Tuesday memo, the hospital system’s CEO, Marc Boom, said that 24,947 employees had complied with the vaccination requirement and that 27 of the 178 others had received the first of a two-dose vaccine and wouldn’t be fired if they got their second. The rest are subject to termination.
He also wrote that 285 other employees received medical or religious exemptions, and 332 were deferred because they were pregnant or for some other reason.
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Take it to the Federal level and it will be overturned. EUA vaccinations cannot be a condition of employment.
Unless the Federal government makes it illegal to make this an employment condition, Texas is an employment at will state, which says, unless it is illegal, an employer can set any condition they want, and fire employees at will.
This is from the State of Texas website:
Pay and Policies – General
The basic rule of Texas employment law is employment at will, which applies to all phases of the employment relationship – it means that absent a statute or an express agreement (such as an employment contract) to the contrary, either party in an employment relationship may modify any of the terms or conditions of employment, or terminate the relationship altogether, for any reason, or no particular reason at all, with or without advance notice.
Exceptions: other than statutes and express agreements, the only significant exception to employment at will is the “public policy” exception, i.e., no termination or adverse job action against an employee in retaliation for the employee having refused to commit a criminal act on the employer’s behalf.
Thus, in an employment at will state, and to a lesser extent in other states, employers may develop and change personnel policies, reassign employees, and change such things as work locations, schedules, job titles, job descriptions, pay, and other aspects of jobs at will.
Texas is also a right to work state – under the Texas right to work laws (§§101.052-.053, Texas Labor Code), employment may not be conditioned or denied on the basis of membership or non-membership in a union.
In almost any kind of employment claim or lawsuit, it will help to be able to point to clear written policies and to state that employees are notified of the standards to which they will be held.
Secret policies are useless – employees should of course have access to whatever policies will apply to them – an unknown policy cannot be used against an ex-employee in an unemployment claim or any other kind of employment-related claim or lawsuit.
It may be too nuanced for JCB to comprehend, but an emergency use authorization by the FDA is as good as a regular approval. In both instances, it means the vaccinations have been shown to be both effective and safety to receive.
This IS a federal lawsuit
I wonder how long it’ll take Texas to try to legislate their way out of it. Place your bets in terms of hours, not days or weeks.
And here’s something interesting: “Pakistan’s Punjab to block SIM cards of citizens not vaccinated against Covid-19: Report”
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https://www.msn.com/en-in/news/world/pakistans-punjab-to-block-sim-cards-of-citizens-not-vaccinated-against-covid-19-report/ar-AAKVEKW
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There’s also this note: “…adding that around 300,000 recipients of the first dose of the vaccine never returned for the second dose since the start of Pakistan’s mass inoculation drive on February 2.”