Posted: 06/13/2021 / 11:21 AM CDTUpdated: 6/13/2021 / 11:27 AM CDT
HOUSTON (AP) – A federal judge dismissed a lawsuit filed by employees of a Houston hospital system demanding that all employees be vaccinated against COVID-19.
The Houston Methodist Hospital System last week suspended 178 employees without pay for refusing to be vaccinated. Of them, 117 sued for the requirement to be repealed and suspended, and threatened with dismissal.
In a damning verdict on Saturday, US District Judge Lynn Hughes of Houston found lead plaintiff Jennifer Bridges’ assertion that the vaccines were “experimental and dangerous” to be false and otherwise irrelevant. He also found that she compared the compulsory vaccination with the medical experiments enforced by the Nazis on concentration camp prisoners during the Holocaust as “reprehensible”.
Hughes also ruled that there was no compulsion to make vaccination a working condition, as Bridges claimed.
“Bridges are free to choose whether to accept or decline a COVID-19 vaccine; However, if she refuses, she will simply have to work elsewhere. If an employee refuses an assignment, change of office, earlier start time, or other instruction, they can be duly dismissed. Every employment includes restrictions on the behavior of the employee for remuneration. It’s all part of the deal, ”concluded Hughes.
Jared Woodfill, a Houston attorney who represents Bridges and the other clients, promised an appeal.
“All of my customers continue to work to fight these unjust policies,” Woodfill said in a statement. “What is shocking is that many of my clients were on the front lines during the height of the pandemic, treating COVID positive patients at the Texas Methodist Hospital. As a result, many of them contracted COVID-19. As a thank you for their service and sacrifice, the Methodist Hospital gives them a pink slip of paper and condemns them to bankruptcy. “
Staff had a June 7 deadline to complete their vaccination.
In a memo on Tuesday, Hospital System CEO Marc Boom said 24,947 employees had been vaccinated and that 27 of the 178 others had received the first of a two-dose vaccination and would not be fired when they got their second. The rest is subject to termination.
He also wrote that 285 other employees received medical or religious exemptions and 332 were deferred because of pregnancy or other reasons.
Comments are closed.