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Employer Vaccination Mandates Under Scrutiny Post COVID-19

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6 minute read

From Heartland Daily News

By Kenneth Artz

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.

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COVID-19

Dr. Trozzi expresses optimism after day in court appealing to overturn ban on his medical license

Published on

From LifeSiteNews

By Anthony Murdoch

The outspoken critic of COVID-19 shots said the judge appeared interested in learning more about the underlying cause of accusations made against him by the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario.

Canadian medical freedom fighter Dr. Mark Trozzi passionately appealed his legal case before a court on Tuesday with the help of his lawyer. The outcome will determine whether he regains his right to practice medicine again after it was taken away because he spoke out against COVID shots.

Trozzi told LifeSiteNews he is “optimistic” about the outcome, noting that the judge seemed interested to find the underlying cause of accusations made against him by his medical regulator, the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario (CPSO).

“I think the judge was pretty curious to dig into the science files which they (CPSO) ignored and see why I accused them of these things. They are counting on the judge to just think I am nuts and punish me for strong words,” Trozzi told LifeSiteNews after his hearing.

During the hearing, the CPSO had its lawyers go over their reasons for stripping Trozzi of his medical license earlier in the year.

His appeal case was heard by the Ontario Divisional Court (ODC). The banned doctor is hopeful he will be successful in having a decision overturned by the CPSO, which stripped him of his medical license earlier this year because he spoke out against COVID jabs and mandates.

According to Trozzi, who has 25 years of experience working in emergency rooms, the CPSO’s court “strategy was trying to make me sound crazy,” but he does not “think it will work.”

“I am optimistic that these judges are going to do their part to start restoring some sort of worthwhile future for their grandkids and ours,” he told LifeSiteNews.

Trozzi’s case, should it be successful, attorney Michael Alexander said it would have far-reaching legal implications that directly impact Canadians’ freedom of expression rights across “all domains of government regulation,” including all health colleges.

On January 25, the CPSO’s Discipline Tribunal, led by registrar Dr. Nancy Whitmore, stripped Trozzi of his license because he exposed the truth of the COVID ‘pandemic’ and its vaccines.

“In essence the CPSO has just abused their authority and violated doctors, running their tribunal as a kangaroo court and torture chamber. Their science was minuscule, and they never even refuted the volumes of scientific evidence which we placed before them,” he told LifeSiteNews.

“We have them in the appeal court now to rope them in from their extreme abuse of power, for starters.

During the hearing, the CPSO, as noted by Trozzi, talked about its accusations against him, regarding COVID jabs as well as PCR tests.

“The CPSO talked about strong accusations I have made against them and others, for things such as experimental genetic injections not ‘safe and effective vaccines,’ no real pandemic, PCR scam, obstructed treatment, the criminality of the college,” he said.

“They climaxed these portions with quoting my most stern moments that are founded on those true accusations, things like ‘they should be prosecuted, imprisoned, lawfully hung.’”

The CPSO has thus far initiated legal action against Trozzi and at least five other doctors who are committed to their Hippocratic Oath responsibilities related to COVD: Mary O’ConnorRochangé KilianCeleste Jean ThirlwellPatrick Phillips, and Crystal Luchkiw.

Hearing panel ‘fair,’ Trozzi’s lawyer says

During the court hearing, Alexander made some exceptionally good arguments to support Trozzi’s claims that he was unfairly targeted by the CPSO in “biased” proceedings.

In speaking to LifeSiteNews, Alexander said in his view he felt that the hearing panel “was fair,” adding that he and Trozzi “had a good day.”

“I mean in the sense that I got out the core arguments that we needed to make to succeed in this,” he said.

“I don’t feel that the lawyers for the college really grappled with our arguments. They just repeated their own arguments. But I cannot say at the end of the day how the court will deal with that, but that’s my observation of it.”

Alexander told LifeSiteNews that as he has said before, the CPSO proceedings against Trozzi were “biased.”

“If my arguments are accepted about the fundamental errors, relating to the evidence that were made by the tribunal. If those are accepted it really impugns the entire decision and I would hope leads to an assumption that the proceeding was biased,” he said.

Alexander noted that once there is “evidence of bias,” the decision, in this case, the CPSO against Trozzi “must be overturned.”

“The proceeding certainly was biased, and I have argued that” he said.

Alexander noted how he had hoped for a full-day hearing, but he had to make do with a half-day hearing because the court is slammed with various cases.

A ruling in favor of Trozzi would overturn his medical license ban, but Alexander noted that a decision is not likely until the new year. LifeSiteNews will report on the judge’s ruling on today’s court hearing once that decision has been made public.

The hearing was open to the public, but the live stream suffered from outages for some, and others could not even log in, in after the capacity limit of the stream was reached.

In 2020 during the COVID crisis, Trozzi became concerned after the mainstream narrative regarding the virus and various public health emergencies were severely skewed.

He observed that his hospital’s ER was mostly empty despite claims they were overflowing.

Trozzi came under the CPSO spotlight for promoting alternative COVID treatments and publicly explained why the COVID shot is “not a vaccine.”

In retaliation for speaking out, he was barred from issuing medical exemptions for COVID-19 injections as well as masking requirements and testing, in 2021.

The CPSO has cracked down on numerous physicians who failed to comply with standard protocol during the COVID outbreak. It has done this so assiduously that Dr. Robert Malone spoke out last year against what he described as the “re-education” of dissident Canadian doctors.

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COVID-19

Dr. Trozzi appeals revocation of his medical license in ‘existential moment’ for Ontario courts

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Dr. Mark Trozzi

From LifeSiteNews

By Patrick Delaney

Tuesday, outspoken COVID science critic Dr. Mark Trozzi will appeal a decision to take away his medical license. Due to a new legal standard, a successful outcome may positively impact Canada ‘in all domains of government regulation.’

Medical freedom champion Dr. Mark Trozzi will present his legal case on Tuesday when he appeals the stripping of his medical license in January by the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario (CPSO).

The case will be heard by the Ontario Divisional Court (ODC) and, according to attorney Michael Alexander, a successful result would have far-reaching legal implications impacting freedom of expression rights across “all domains of government regulation,” including all health colleges.

Appearing in a late September interview with Canadian politician Derek Sloan, Alexander explained the history of the case leading up to the revoking of Trozzi’s license on January 25. In their view, “the college was primarily concerned … that Mark had been making statements about COVID-19 science and public policy that amounted to ‘misinformation’ and he was misleading the public and in doing so causing harm.”

It was also relevant that Trozzi was not even in practice at this time but had taken a sabbatical to study these issues more carefully and start a daily newsletter regarding his research.

The concern of CPSO “was the substance of his views,” the attorney assessed, “so they wanted to censor him in some way” and “eventually took him to a discipline hearing where he was found to be unprofessional, incompetent, and in violation of the standard of practice in the profession, primarily because he just presented an alternative point of view.”

READ: Dr. Trozzi stripped of medical license over COVID stance, plans to appeal

Ironically, Trozzi was not able to be present for the interview himself because he was traveling in Japan, with an invitation to speak before its parliament. He had already addressed the Romanian parliament on issues related to the COVID-19 response.

While the highly regarded former emergency room specialist “is a persona non grata in Ontario,” Dr. Trozzi’s attorney observed, “he’s in high demand around the world as someone who is providing important insights into the whole COVID era, COVID science, COVID public policy, and his criticisms are taken very seriously.”

Trozzi case could impact ‘the country in all domains of government regulation’

For more than three decades, the Ontario Divisional Court has been legally directed to judge such cases only according to a low-threshold standard called “reasonableness” that Alexander describes as the court basically deferring to the judgment of such regulatory tribunals as CPSO with regard to facts, the law, and “particularly on the interpretation of the law that the tribunal adopts.”

What makes this case different is that since Trozzi has a “statute-based right to appeal” and thus a 2019 Supreme Court decision now requires the ODC to adopt a higher standard, referred to as “correctness,” in examining the CPSO decision.

Therefore, according to this new standard, “you must get all findings of fact correct, you must get every interpretation of your statute correct, you must interpret all case law correctly,” Alexander explained.

“So, the CPSO has never had to face this before, and this (case) is the first major fundamental challenge to a regulatory body on this standard of correctness in Ontario,” he continued. Thus, this case is “extremely important. If we were to win, it would affect the whole regulatory framework of the province in a positive way.”

“So these same judges, who have been cutting a lot of slack to the College of Physicians in particular, are now going to be facing similar issues that they have faced before but on this new standard of correctness,” the attorney said.  “So they are going to have to adopt a completely different mindset in assessing the case.”

Therefore, “I guess you could say (this is) an existential moment for the judiciary in Ontario,” Alexander proposed.  “I mean will the Divisional Court step up to the plate and fully apply the standard of correctness and have the courage to do it?”

According to Alexander, a successful outcome in this case “would have a ripple effect not just in Ontario for the 22 health colleges here but for the health colleges all across the country,” forcing them to reconsider their policies in this regard.

And given the case regards the fundamental freedom of expression, a successful outcome on these arguments “would have an impact across the country in all domains of government regulation.”

“So this is not a case that’s just about Mark,” the attorney clarified. “We are trying to change the way this country is governed, and the college’s case has given us that opportunity.”

In 2020 during the “pandemic,” Trozzi, an ER veteran of 25 years, noticed that the mainstream narrative surrounding the public health “emergency” was deeply flawed. While media reported overflowing emergency rooms, Trozzi’s hospital remained relatively empty. This inspired him to research the science facts of COVID.

In the interest of protecting not only his own patients but people everywhere, Dr. Trozzi promoted alternative COVID-19 treatments and publicly explained why the COVID shot is “not a vaccine.”

In retaliation, Dr. Trozzi was barred from issuing medical exemptions for COVID-19 shots, masking requirements and testing in 2021. He was not alone: Ontario’s Dr. Rochagne Kilian was also similarly barred.

At the time, CPSO said the interim orders were given in accordance with the Regulated Health Professions Act, which allow restrictions on a member’s license if a regulator believes a certain practice “exposes or is likely to expose patients to harm or injury.”

The CPSO has cracked down on numerous physicians who failed to comply with standard protocol during the COVID outbreak. It has done this so assiduously that last year Dr. Robert Malone spoke out against what he described as the “re-education” of dissident Canadian doctors.

READ: Dr. Robert Malone leads thousands of scientists in calling for a total end to ‘orchestrated’ COVID crisis

The CPSO has thus far initiated legal action against Trozzi and at least five other doctors who are committed to their Hippocratic Oath responsibilities related to COVID: Mary O’ConnorKilianCeleste Jean Thirlwell, Patrick Phillips, and Crystal Luchkiw.

Alexander also made clear that while the CPSO has the typical governmental “blank check” of “unlimited resources,” including “around 10 lawyers on staff” and “access to outside council,” he is in need to hire “clerks to do special kinds of filing” and is seeking free-will donations.

Having donated “hundreds of thousands of dollars of billable time” into this case, Alexander has no regrets, stating that “it’s too important to the country not to litigate and we are the ones who pioneered this approach, and so it’s us or nobody.”

To assist Dr. Trozzi in winning his precedent-setting case, please donate here.

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