Michael Ejercito wrote:

>https://www.reddit.com/r/LockdownSkepticism/comments/1gi68ln/why_workers_fired_for_refusing_covid_vaccines_are/
>
>Why workers fired for refusing Covid vaccines are starting to win in court
>By Jenna Greene
>November 1, 202412:05 PM PDTUpdated 2 days ago
>
>
>
>Commentary
>Legal Action by Jenna Greene
>People receive their second COVID-19 boosters in Waterford, Michigan
>s up syringes with the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) vaccines for
>residents who are over 50 years old and immunocompromised and are
>eligible to receive their second booster shots in Waterford, Michigan,
>U.S., April 8, 2022. REUTERS/Emily Elconin/File photo Purchase Licensing
>Rights, opens new tab
>Nov 1 (Reuters) - Liberal San Francisco is hardly a hotbed of anti-COVID
>vaxxers – more than 90% of the city’s population got the shot, according
>to government data, opens new tab.
>That’s partly why I found a verdict, opens new tab by a San Francisco
>federal jury last week in favor of six public transit workers who were
>fired for refusing to comply with their employer’s COVID-19 vaccine
>mandate on religious grounds so unexpected.
>Jurors awarded the Bay Area Rapid Transit, or BART, ex-employees more
>than $1 million each for workplace civil rights violations, for a total
>of $7.8 million.
>Advertisement · Scroll to continue
>
>As similar cases make their way through courts around the country,
>plaintiffs lawyers tell me they see the verdict as a sign of more big
>payouts to come.
>To misquote the Broadway tune, “If you can make it in San Francisco, you
>can make it anywhere,” said James Lawrence, a Raleigh-based Envisage Law
>partner representing three musicians allegedly fired by the North
>Carolina Symphony after refusing the COVID vaccination based on their
>religious beliefs.
>Advertisement · Scroll to continue
>
>The lawsuits I've reviewed, whether targeting a food conglomerate in
>Arkansas, opens new tab, an airline in Hawaii, opens new tab, hospitals
>in Oregon, opens new tab or a host of cities, opens new tab, revolve
>around similar claims that employers wrongly refused to accommodate
>devout workers who asked to be exempt from COVID-19 vaccine mandates.
>Alleging violations of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964,
>plaintiffs who self-identify as Christian, Catholic, Jewish, Muslim,
>Buddhist and other faiths say they were discriminated against on the
>basis of religion, and that they could have masked, tested, worked
>remotely or taken other measures that would have allowed them to stay on
>the job.
>The employers have typically countered that exempting the workers from
>the vaccine would have caused undue hardship to their businesses, and
>that their mandates were put in place to stem the spread of the
>coronavirus and keep their workforce safe.
>In 2023, the U.S. Supreme Court upped the standard, opens new tab for
>“undue hardship” to mean that granting an accommodation would impose a
>“substantial cost” on the business, Jeffrey Hirsch, a professor at the
>University of North Carolina School of Law who specializes in labor and
>employment law, told me. “That makes it easier (for plaintiffs) to bring
>these claims."
>
>One of the first verdicts came in June, when a federal jury in
>Chattanooga awarded, opens new tab a Tennessee woman $687,000 –
>including $500,000 in punitive damages – against Blue Cross Blue Shield
>of Tennessee.
>Tanja Benton, who identifies as a Christian, objected, opens new tab to
>the vaccine because she alleged cell lines from aborted fetuses were
>used in its research and development, which “she believed to be contrary
>to God’s law,” her lawyer Doug Hamill wrote.
>(Multiple public health authorities confirm, opens new tab that the
>vaccines themselves do not contain fetal stem cells.)
>Hamill did not respond to a request for comment, nor did Benton reply to
>a message sent via LinkedIn.
>Benton, a data scientist who rarely interacted with clients, proposed
>that she continue to work remotely from home unvaccinated. Blue Cross
>allegedly refused and gave her 30 days to look for another job with the
>company that didn’t require vaccination. When she didn’t find a
>position, she said she was fired.
>A Blue Cross spokesperson said the company "knows that vaccines save
>lives," and believes its "vaccine requirement was the best decision for
>our employees and members, and that our accommodation to the requirement
>complied with the law."
>The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in 2021 guidance, opens
>new tab said employers should “generally” proceed on the assumption that
>an employee's request for religious accommodation is based on sincerely
>held beliefs.
>Blue Cross and its outside counsel from Holland & Knight, however,
>suggest in a pending motion, opens new tab to set the verdict aside that
>Benton’s objection to the vaccine was not part of a “comprehensive
>belief system.” Noting for example that she’d been had flu vaccinations
>in the past, the defense argued her objection was a “one-off belief
>against COVID-19 vaccination” that doesn't merit legal protection.
>In the BART case, defense counsel appeared to focus less on the
>sincerity of the plaintiffs’ beliefs and more on the undue burden that
>the subway system claimed accommodation would present.
>According to the complaint filed in San Francisco federal court in 2022,
>179 of BART’s 3,900 employees requested religious exemptions to its
>COVID vaccine mandate, which was put in place even though unvaccinated
>passengers could still freely ride the trains.
>About 70 of the employee requests – which included fetal stem
>cell-related objections as well as concerns such as “alteration of a
>divinely-created immune system” – were granted, but in every instance,
>BART found it would be an undue hardship to provide an accommodation.
>For workers with jobs such as station agent or police officer, I can
>understand how working from home wasn’t an option.
>But one employee had a full hazmat suit and offered to wear it while
>working, plaintiffs counsel Kevin Snider of the non-profit Pacific
>Justice Institute told me. Another cleaned empty trains at the end of
>the line and unsuccessfully argued she could work alone while masked.
>No accommodation “was ever good enough,” Snider said.
>A BART spokesperson declined comment.
>BART lawyers did manage to narrow the case when Senior U.S. District
>Judge William Alsup in pre-trial ruling, opens new tab nixed the
>plaintiffs’ claims that their First Amendment right to free exercise of
>religion had been violated, ruling the vaccine mandate served a
>legitimate public purpose in stemming the spread of COVID-19.
>However, a similar “free exercise” claim survived against the North
>Carolina Symphony in a ruling, opens new tab by U.S. District Judge
>James Dever in Raleigh in late September.
>Two French horn players, both Buddhists, objected to the taking the
>COVID vaccine because it was allegedly tested on animals and used fetal
>cell lines, while a Jewish violin player said he believes “his body is a
>temple” and cannot be altered or defiled by medicine.
>In refusing to dismiss the complaint, opens new tab, Dever wrote that
>the plaintiffs plausibly alleged that the symphony’s president in
>denying their requests wanted to promote a “vaccination ‘culture.’”
>A spokesperson told me via email that the symphony's “priority has been
>to protect the health and safety of our musicians and staff,” adding
>that the vaccine mandate was lifted last year.

In the interim, we are 100% prepared/protected in the "full armor of
GOD" (Ephesians 6:11) which we put on as soon as we use Apostle Paul's
secret (Philippians 4:12). Though masking is less protective, it helps
us avoid the appearance of doing the evil of spreading airborne
pathogens while there are people getting sick because of not being
100% protected. It is written that we're to "abstain from **all**
appearance of doing evil" (1 Thessalonians 5:22 w/**emphasis**).

Meanwhile, the only *perfect* (Matt 5:47-8 ) way to eradicate the
COVID-19 virus, thereby saving lives, in the UK & elsewhere is by
rapidly (i.e. use the "Rapid COVID-19 Test" ) finding out at any given
moment, including even while on-line, who among us are unwittingly
contagious (i.e pre-symptomatic or asymptomatic) in order to
"convince it forward" (John 15:12) for them to call their doctor and
self-quarantine per their doctor in hopes of stopping this pandemic.
Thus, we're hoping for the best while preparing for the worse-case
scenario of the Alpha lineage mutations and others like the Omicron,
Gamma, Beta, Epsilon, Iota, Lambda, Mu & Delta lineage mutations
combining via slip-RNA-replication to form hybrids like "Deltamicron"
that may render current COVID vaccines/monoclonals/medicines/pills no
longer effective.

Indeed, I am wonderfully hungry (
https://groups.google.com/g/sci.med.cardiology/c/6ZoE95d-VKc/m/14vVZoyOBgAJ
) and hope you, Michael, also have a healthy appetite too.

So how are you ?