Susan Bickley, a labor and employment partner with Blank Rome in Houston, says that Hugh’s dismissal of the case was not unexpected. Woodfill asserts that as a “case of first impressions” with little legal precedent, there is a strong possibility the Supreme Court could take up Bridges et al v Houston Methodist Hospital or a similar case this year.Ĭourts have previously upheld the right of employers to require flu vaccinations if accommodations are made for disabilities or religious objections, but COVID-19 vaccine objectors note the flu vaccines are fully FDA approved, but that a mandate for an EUA vaccine would violate federal laws governing medical experimentation. Last year, some Centers for Disease Control and Prevention documents indicated that EUA vaccines could not be made mandatory, but the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission recently asserted that employers could require the vaccines as long as they offered some “reasonable accommodations.” “But we don’t want to be human guinea pigs.” “We are not anti-vaccination,” Bridges said at last week’s protest.
FIFTH CIRCUIT COURT OF APPEALS CASES FULL
Under the usual process, full approval is only granted after several years of study and evaluation of efficacy and adverse side effects. Instead, vaccines have been given emergency use authorization (EUA). We are going to be fighting for quite a while.”īridges and other suspended employees argue that the COVID-19 vaccines have not been fully vetted and are not yet fully approved by the FDA.
Houston Methodist nurse Jennifer Bridges, the lead plaintiff in the case, vows to fight all the way to the Supreme Court if necessary. On Monday, plaintiff’s attorney Jared Woodfill filed an appeal to the U.S. District Court Judge Lynn Hughes dismissed the federal lawsuit saying plaintiffs had not been coerced by their private employer and had the choice to “simply…work somewhere else.” On the day of the June 7 deadline a number of employees walked off the hospital’s Baytown campus to join demonstrators in protest, and the following day Houston Methodist suspended 178 employees for non-compliance with the mandate. In May, 117 Houston Methodist employees filed suit in a state district court in Montgomery County, but in June the case transferred to the federal court system. Hospital administration gave workers a June 7 deadline to submit to the vaccinations or be placed on a 14-day unpaid suspension followed by termination. In April, Houston Methodist Hospital system notified approximately 26,000 employees that they must receive the emergency-authorized COVID-19 vaccine or be subject to termination.
Austin, TX, JAfter a federal court judge sided with a Houston hospital system last weekend, medical workers suing over a COVID-19 vaccine mandate have filed an appeal in hopes of pushing the case to the U.S.