COVID-19
Employer Vaccination Mandates Under Scrutiny Post COVID-19
From Heartland Daily News
By 
From presidential candidate Donald Trump’s promise to reinstate military members who were fired for not getting COVID-19 shots to a federal court decision favoring employee vaccination preferences, vaccine mandates at work appear to be coming to an end.
The Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago, Illinois ruled employees at Wisconsin health care system Aspirus, Inc. can go forward with their claim that they were unlawfully denied a religious exemption from having to accept a COVID-19 shot. Aspirus claimed the employees’ real reason for not wanting the shots was secular, not religious.
Public Employees Protected
In 2023, Texas updated Section 81B.003 of the state’s health and safety code prohibiting vaccination mandates for state and local government employees. Before the change, employees had to prove a health risk or religious convictions to be granted an exemption.
Texas has taken the lead in prohibiting government agencies from issuing mandates for people to get vaccinated. Similar laws have passed in Florida and 11 other states: Arizona, Arkansas, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Montana, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Tennessee, and Utah.
Private Employees’ Rights Unclear
Private employers are a different matter says Javier Perez, a board-certified labor and employment law attorney with Crain Brogdon LLP in Dallas
“Despite the new protective laws for [government] employees, unless there is a specific law prohibiting employer vaccine mandates, employers can still, generally speaking, impose workplace vaccine mandates so long as they do not discriminate,” said Perez, a board-certified labor and employment law attorney with Crain Brogdon LLP in Dallas. “The employer has wide discretion to decide what the rules of the road are in their workplace.”
The dynamics in the workplace have changed, says Perez.
“My sense of the job market is that employers can replace people who won’t comply,” said Perez. “But with a lot of jobs pivoting to remote work—more than we thought possible—it’s kind of an easy way, on a temporary basis, to work around those risks.”
Mandates ‘Have Backfired’
Despite the lack of clarity in employer-employee relations, the tide is turning against vaccine mandates and other COVID-related work rules, in particular failures to accommodate religious exemptions, says Douglas P. Seaton, J.D, Ph.D., president of Upper Midwest Law Center.
“These mandates, based on shoddy or no science, have backfired because they have resulted in serious levels of suspicion of the bona fides of all new government regulation, especially when ‘science’ is claimed to be the rationale,” said Seaton.
‘Simply Shut Up’
In 1905, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled Massachusetts could not pass a vaccination mandate to protect the individual but could do so “to protect the public from a dangerous communicable disease.”
Historically, the public health bureaucracy had been relatively circumspect in exercising that enormous power to control individual behavior, says Linda Gorman, director of the Independence Institute’s Health Care Policy Center. Things began to change in the 1990s when public health researchers and government health bureaucracies were captured by the notion that the British, Canadian, and European health care systems were better than the U.S. system because they were government-controlled.
“They apparently believed that health would improve, and costs would fall, if patients, doctors, and suppliers would simply shut up and do as they were told,” said Gorman.
‘Power Is Attractive’
The COVID-19 pandemic tested that power. Instead of systematically providing the best available information to individuals about the new COVID vaccine and allowing informed consent, the bureaucrats resorted to brute force to make people do as they were told, says Gorman.
“Power is attractive, and I see no sign that the health bureaucracy will give up its vast powers without a fight,” said Gorman. “The tragedy is the backfire has made people suspicious about all vaccine recommendations, and unknown numbers of people will die and suffer severe health consequences as a result.”
The COVID overreach made credentialed experts’ ethical failings evident, says Gorman.
“It is now obvious that government health bureaucracies see no harm in lying about efficacy, disease risk, and data quality in order to achieve their own end,” said Gorman.
“The first question is, ‘What do we do about it?’” said Gorman. “The second is, “Who should people trust for the accurate information they need to make informed decisions about their medical care?”
Kenneth Artz ([email protected]) writes from Tyler, Texas.
From LifeSiteNews
Alberta Justice Also Argento concluded that the major airline WestJet must pay Duong Yee, an accountant based in Calgary, $65,587.72 in damages.
Canada’s second-largest airline has been ordered by a judge to compensate one of its employees who refused to take the COVID shot and was “wrongfully terminated.”
In a ruling, Alberta Justice Also Argento concluded that the major airline WestJet must pay Duong Yee, an accountant based in Calgary, $65,587.72 in damages.
Court documents show that Yee, who worked for the company for 11 years, was put on unpaid leave on November 1, 2021, and was then fired from her job. Her termination came shortly after the federal government of now former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau had mandated that all workers of federally regulated industries receive the COVID shots.
Yee had tried to avoid getting the COVID shot through a religious exemption, which was denied by WestJet.
Justice Argento ruled that WestJet could have allowed Yee to work from home to avoid having to get the jab instead of firing her outright.
“The regulations only required the defendant’s employees who were physically accessing ‘aerodrome property’ to be vaccinated,” wrote Argento.
“They would not have applied to the plaintiff while she continued to work from home. The defendant was aware of the regulations, but did not consider whether the plaintiff could continue working from home as an alternative to dismissal.”
Justice Argento also observed in his ruling that the plaintiff’s “refusal” to get the COVID jab and comply with WestJet’s jab policy “did not impact her job performance,” and it did not “endanger the defendant’s employees or the public as the plaintiff was working from home.”
“While the plaintiff was wrongfully terminated, the surrounding circumstances do not attract aggravated damages,” noted the justice.
“The dismissal was not conducted in an unduly insensitive or egregious manner. Furthermore, the plaintiff led virtually no evidence explaining how the dismissal impacted her.”
Yee’s claims for both moral and aggravated damages were dismissed by the court.
In October 2021, Trudeau announced unprecedented COVID-19 jab mandates for all federal workers and those in the transportation sector and said the unjabbed will no longer be able to travel by air, boat, or train, both domestically and internationally.
This policy resulted in thousands losing their jobs or being placed on leave for non-compliance.
Many pilots and airline workers lost their jobs as a result but have fought back via lawsuits.
LifeSiteNews has published an extensive amount of research on the dangers of the experimental COVID mRNA jabs that include heart damage and blood clots.
The mRNA shots have also been linked to a multitude of negative and often severe side effects in children, and all have connections to cell lines derived from aborted babies.
Canada’s Vaccine Injury Support Program (VISP) was launched in December 2020 after the government gave vaccine makers a shield from liability regarding COVID-19 jab-related injuries.
Recently, VISP injury payments are expected to go over budget, according to a Canadian Department of Health memo.
From LifeSiteNews
Freedom Convoy leader Tamara Lich is slated to be sentenced on July 23.
In a recent update by The Democracy Fund, the group noted that “Sentencing for Ms. Lich is scheduled for July 23rd and 24th before Justice Perkins-McVey in Ottawa.”
In April of this year, Lich and Chris Barber were found guilty of mischief for their roles as leaders of the 2022 protest and as social media influencers. The conviction came despite the non-violent nature of the popular movement.
TDF also noted that the full 108 page judgment of Justice Perkins-McVey’s ruling is now available online.
According to TDF, the “Court determined that both Ms. Lich and Mr. Barber were leaders of the Freedom Convoy 2022 movement and were involved in organizing and leading trucks and other vehicles from western Canada.”
“While there was no evidence that Ms. Lich owned a vehicle emitting fumes or honking, or that she blocked access to buildings, the Court noted her creation of the Freedom Convoy 2022 Facebook page, which gained a large following, and her involvement in setting up the GoFundMe and later GiveSendGo fundraising pages,” noted TDF.
As for Barber, his sentencing has been further delayed. The delay in his case follows an update he gave earlier this month in which he announced that the Crown wants to jail him for two years in addition to seizing the truck he used in the protest. As such, his legal team has asked for a stay of proceedings for the time being.
The Lich and Barber trial concluded in September of 2024, more than a year after it began. It was only originally scheduled to last 16 days.
Lich and Barber were initially arrested on February 17, 2022, meaning their legal battle has lasted longer than three years.
Despite the peaceful nature of the Freedom Convoy, then-Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his Liberal government invoked the Emergencies Act to clear-out protesters, an action a federal judge has since said was “not justified.” During the clear-out, an elderly lady was trampled by a police horse and many who donated to the cause had their bank accounts frozen.
The actions taken by the Trudeau government were publicly supported by Mark Carney at the time, who won re-election on April 28 and is slated to form a minority government.
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