HOUSTON (CN) — Do employees of a private company have any legal grounds to challenge its Covid vaccination mandate? No, according to a Houston federal judge. He dismissed a lawsuit from a group of suspended hospital workers who likened its vaccination regime to experiments on human guinea pigs.
Houston Methodist suspended nurse Jennifer Bridges and nearly 200 other staff without pay Tuesday and will fire them if they do not comply with a two-week deadline to get fully vaccinated against Covid-19.
Represented by Houston attorney Jared Woodfill, Bridges and 115 other Houston Methodist staff took the hospital system to court in late May, comparing the vaccinate mandate to Nazi experiments on concentration camp prisoners during the Holocaust.
The challengers also portrayed themselves as whistleblowers taking a stand against Houston Methodist coercing them to do an “illegal act”: submit to vaccines that have only been approved by the Food and Drug Administration for emergency use.
U.S. District Judge Lynn Hughes, a Ronald Reagan appointee, made quick work of the complaint after it was transferred June 1 to federal court in Houston from a Texas state court. He dismissed it Saturday, a week after denying the plaintiffs’ motion for an injunction against the hospital’s vaccine policy.
“Bridges does not specify what illegal act she has refused to perform . . . Receiving a Covid-19 vaccination is not an illegal act, and it carries no criminal penalties. She is refusing to accept inoculation that, in the hospital’s judgment, will make it safer for their workers and the patients in Methodist’s care,” Hughes wrote in a 6-page dismissal order.
Woodfill argued over and over in a hearing Friday that federal law says Houston Methodist cannot coerce Bridges to accept a non-FDA approved vaccine.
“Emergency use authorization is not an FDA approval,” Woodfill wrote in an amended complaint he filed Thursday.
At the hearing, Woodfill also said Bridges and dozens of other plaintiffs had contracted Covid, and cited three studies saying people sickened by the respiratory illness have antibodies protecting them against catching it again.
Woodfill added many of his clients are women of child-bearing age worried about Covid vaccines’ potential to make them infertile.
“Once it’s in your bloodstream you can’t get it out,” he said.
Woodfill, the former chair of Harris County’s Republican Party, has filed numerous lawsuits over the past year challenging pandemic-related restrictions and accommodations: from a public school district’s mandate its employees wear masks, to the Texas Senate’s rule that people test negative for Covid before entry into the Senate gallery, to then-Harris County Clerk Chris Hollins allowing drive-thru voting for the November election for those concerned about catching Covid at packed polling places.
More than 5,000 deaths from Covid vaccines have been reported to the Centers for Disease Control’s Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System, according to Woodfill. By comparison, Woodfill told Judge Hughes, flu vaccines are linked to 20 to 30 deaths per year.
Methodist’s counsel Daniel Patton, of the Houston firm Scott Patton, questioned the accuracy of those figures, given that anyone, not just medical professionals, can make a report to the CDC’s database.
Hughes found Houston Methodist’s vaccine mandate is not coercion, just a term of employment, the same as a requirement to show up to work on time.
“If a worker refuses an assignment, changed office, earlier start time, or other directive, he may be properly fired,” he wrote in his dismissal order.
On the fact the FDA has only approved vaccines made by Moderna, Pfizer-BioNTech and Johnson & Johnson for emergency use, Hughes said in Friday's hearing, “Enough has been done that the FDA is confident to release it under the circumstances.”
At the bench in his wood-paneled courtroom, the 79-year-old jurist seemed amused by Woodfill’s arguments and had a little fun.
“How many of Methodist’s employees are grownups?” he asked Woodfill.
“I would hope all of them,” the attorney replied.
“You’re overestimating,” Hughes said.
Patton, Methodist’s attorney, did not join in the joviality.
Of Houston Methodist’s 26,000 employees, over 90% have complied with its inoculation directive, around 200 have not, Patton said in the hearing.
Patton advised the vaccine rejectors can look for jobs in the Texas Medical Center, a medical district in Houston with 21 hospitals.
“If you look at the actual merits, they fail on every count,” he said. “These people have a choice: Choose to get the vaccine. Or get another job in the largest medical center in the world.”
Woodfill said they will appeal to the Fifth Circuit. And if they lose there, to the U.S. Supreme Court. In addition, the attorney said, the suspended Methodist employees will seek a ruling from the Texas Supreme Court in a similar case.
“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,” Woodfill said in an emailed statement. “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.”
“If this ruling is allowed to stand,” he continued, “employers across the country will be able to force their employees to participate in a vaccine trial as a condition for employment. This legal battle has only just begun.”
Houston Methodist said it is pleased Hughes dismissed “a frivolous lawsuit,” noting 24,947 of its employees have now met the vaccine requirements.
“The plaintiffs falsely claimed that the Covid-19 vaccines are not safe. With more than 300 million doses administered in the United States alone, the vaccines have proven to be extremely safe,” it said in a statement.
Its president, Dr. Marc Boom, said he "couldn't be prouder" of the staff who have complied with the policy.
"Our employees and physicians made their decisions for our patients, who are always at the center of everything we do. They have fulfilled their sacred obligation as health care workers, and we couldn’t ask for a more dedicated, caring and talented team," he said.
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