A federal judge threw out a lawsuit filed by employees of a Houston hospital system over its requirement that all of its staff be vaccinated against COVID-19.
The Houston Methodist Hospital system suspended 178 employees without pay last week over their refusal to get vaccinated. 117 of them sued, looking to take away their requirement. The nurses also sued over their suspension and threatened termination.
The lead plaintiff on the lawsuit, Jennifer Bridges, said the COVID vaccines are "experimental and dangerous."
U.S. District Judge Lynn Hughes of Houston deemed Bridges' complaint to be false and irrelevant. Hughes also found that her comparing the vaccine requirement to the Nazis' forced medical experimentation on concentration camp captives during the Holocaust to be "reprehensible." The judge also said requiring employees to be vaccinated was not coercion, as Bridges contended.
“Bridges can freely choose to accept or refuse a COVID-19 vaccine; however, if she refuses, she will simply need to work somewhere else. If a worker refuses an assignment, changed office, earlier start time, or other directive, he may be properly fired. Every employment includes limits on the worker’s behavior in exchange for remuneration. That is all part of the bargain,” Hughes concluded.
Jared Woodfill, a Houston lawyer representing Bridges and the other clients, promised an appeal.
“All of my clients continue to be committed to fighting this unjust policy,” Woodfill said in a statement. “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. 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.”
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