HeartDoc Andrew wrote:
> 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 ?
>
I am wonderfully hungry!

Michael