This could be the first of many cases in which employees object to their employer’s COVID-19 vaccination requirement – we’ll have to wait and see. In Bridges v. Houston Methodist Hospital (S.D. Texas, 6/12/21), https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/20860669-houston-methodist-lawsuit-order-of-dismissal, the court dismissed a wrongful termination claim by 117 employees who refused to abide by the hospital’s vaccination requirement. (Approximately 26,000 other hospital employees were vaccinated. See https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/legal-regulatory-issues/lawsuit-over-houston-methodist-s-covid-19-vaccine-mandate-dismissed.html.)
The dismissal was based in part on Texas law, which “only protects [at-will] employees from being terminated for refusing to commit an act carrying criminal penalties to the worker.” So it’s possible that other states’ laws could lead to a different result if they provide more protection to at-will employees.
The plaintiffs also pressed three federal law claims. The first was an alleged violation of a law that “authorizes the Secretary of Health and Human Services to introduce into interstate commerce medical products for use in an emergency,” with certain provisos that the plaintiffs claimed the hospital had violated. The court pointed out that this law “does not apply at all to private employers….It does not confer a private opportunity to sue the government, employer, or worker.”
Second, the plaintiffs argued that the vaccination requirement violated federal law governing the protection of human subjects in clinical trials. But, the court explained, “The hospital’s employees are not participants in a human trial….The hospital has not applied to test the COVID-19 vaccines on its employees…and it has not been certified to proceed with clinical trials.” The court didn’t mention the fact that the COVID-19 vaccines that the FDA has approved for emergency use have been through extensive clinical trials.
Finally, the plaintiffs asserted that the vaccination mandate “violates the Nuremberg Code, and [they] liken the threat of termination in this case to forced medical experimentation during the Holocaust.” The court came down particularly hard on this argument, and not just because the Nuremberg Code applies only to governments, not to private employers: “Equating the injection requirement to medical experimentation in concentration camps is reprehensible. Nazi doctors conducted medical experiments on victims that caused pain, mutilation, permanent disability, and in many cases, death.”
We have previously published several posts about COVID-related litigation and, more generally, about the pandemic’s impact on our legal system – e.g., https://www.videntpartners.com/blog/2020/unintended-consequences; https://www.videntpartners.com/blog/2020/second-wave-covid-19-litigation-%E2%80%9Ctake-home%E2%80%9D-infections; https://www.videntpartners.com/blog/2021/more-covid-conundrums; and https://www.videntpartners.com/blog/2021/future-zoom-court. We will continue to keep our readers updated on the latest developments.
