Tuesday, May 28, 2024
COVID-19 Vaccine Litigation Against Mayo Clinic Revived by Federal Court
A lawsuit against the Mayo Clinic must move forward, a federal court has ruled, reviving the suit after it was thrown out in 2023.
The five fired workers who sued the Minnesota-based health nonprofit have all plausibly pleaded that their religious beliefs conflict with the clinic’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate, a panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit ruled on May 24.
The workers in multiple suits, which have since been consolidated, argued that the Mayo Clinic illegally failed to accommodate their religious beliefs, violating Title VII of the Civil Rights Act. Three of the workers applied for religious exemptions to the nonprofit’s mandate and were denied; the two others saw their applications accepted but protested against the requirement that they had to test for COVID-19 weekly.
U.S. District Judge John Tunheim in 2023 tossed the suit, finding that some of the plaintiffs did not prove that they hold religious beliefs in opposition to the mandate or show how the testing requirement conflicts with their beliefs.
The Eighth Circuit’s new ruling is that the judge’s findings were erroneous.
Federal employment law makes it illegal for employers to fire or otherwise take action against employees over their religion. The three workers whose religious exemption requests were denied, Shelly Kiel, Kenneth Ringhofer, and Anita Miller, all said that their Christian beliefs prevented them from accepting COVID-19 vaccination, in part because they oppose abortion and aborted fetus cells were used in the production or testing of the COVID-19 vaccines.
“The district court erred in finding that the plaintiffs failed to adequately connect their refusal of the vaccine with their religious beliefs,” U.S. Circuit Judge Duane Benton said. “At this early stage, when the complaints are read as a whole and the nonmoving party receives the benefit of reasonable inferences, Kiel, Miller, and Ringhofer adequately identify religious views they believe to conflict with taking the COVID-19 vaccine.”
The two other plaintiffs received religious exemptions but refused to undergo weekly testing. One said it “violates her conscience to take the vaccine or to engage in weekly testing or sign a release of information that gives out her medical information.” Both also plausibly pleaded religious beliefs that conflicted with the testing, the panel found.
Judge Tunheim said at one point in his ruling that because many Christians who oppose abortion still receive vaccines, opposition to vaccination based on pro-life beliefs is not linked to religion. However, that view is not correct, Judge Benton said, pointing to a previous U.S. Supreme Court ruling that found that constitutional protection of religious beliefs is “not limited to beliefs which are shared by all of the members of a religious sect.”
The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission had urged the circuit court to rule in favor of the plaintiffs, in part because of that Supreme Court ruling.
The circuit court reversed Judge Tunheim’s ruling and remanded the case back to him.
Judge Tunheim is an appointee of President Bill Clinton. Judge Benton, appointed by President George W. Bush, was joined in the unanimous ruling by U.S. Circuit Judges Ralph Erickson and Jonathan Kobes, both of whom were appointed by President Donald Trump.
The circuit court also ruled for the plaintiffs concerning the Minnesota Human Rights Act (MHRA), which bars employers from discriminating against workers because of factors such as religion. Judge Tunheim said the law only provides a cause of action for workers who allege disability discrimination, not religious discrimination. That’s not correct, according to the appeals court.
“Due to Minnesota’s precedent of (1) construing liberally the MHRA, and (2) providing its citizens with commensurate, or greater, protections than under federal law, the Minnesota Supreme Court would decide that the MHRA provides protection against failures to accommodate religious beliefs,” Judge Benton wrote. “The district court erred by finding that the MHRA does not provide a cause of action for failure to accommodate religious beliefs.”
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NY High Court Justice Slams Hospital--for trying to Avoid Wrongful Death Liability In Ivermectin Cases
Mary Beth Pfeiffer recently shared on X:
“Big WIN in the wrongful death lawsuit of Deborah Bucko, who was cut off of ivermectin after a court ordered it 3X. The judge denied the hospital’s pathetic excuse that it had NO liability under the PREP Act. “Stunning,” the judge wrote.”
Yes, a big win for patients and even the vaccine injured who are filing lawsuits for damages or various forms of support, with the PREP Act undoubtedly the law all of the defendants will point to as assuring their escape from any liability. But would that be the case?
Brief Primer
The deceased, Deborah Bucko, as Ms. Pfeiffer educated us, was one of a number of patients whose families resorted to courts to obtain treatment with a safe, FDA-approved drug, ivermectin, that hospitals refuse to administer, and public health agencies endorse. At the time of the article, there were five ongoing cases with five judges ordering the ivermectin treatment in those cases; three near-death patients, aged 68, 80 and 81, later went home. A fourth, 68 and in a Chicago area hospital, is slowly improving after her treatment began on May 3.
Although not the result of a randomized controlled trial, if an already FDA-approved drug with a good safety profile was helping, why on earth wouldn’t a clinic or hospital be open to trying? We can explain why they could not below.
But denial after denial ensued after this brief period of success for ivermectin, and the Bucko cases portended a new reality during the pandemic—hospital systems would take an increasingly hostile directive against patients and their families requesting ivermectin when all else was failing. And as we explain above, it’s likely that pandemic-era covenants with Pfizer and Moderna played a role. It went something like this: “You want access to our vaccines in development, sign on the dotted line and don’t bother to read the fine print.”
The denials continued despite plenty of evidence at the time suggesting the low-cost, safe drug could have helped. Yes, the drug is only recommended for research by the National Institutes of Health. But that’s a recommendation, and millions of doses of the drug with Nobel-honored distinction have been consumed by patients participating in the Mectizan program alone.
Hundreds of doctors embraced ivermectin in the United States and in fact, TrialSite covered some obscure research demonstrating that at one point during the pandemic, the number of prescriptions per week approached 90,000--this as compared to about 3,000 per week pre-pandemic.
It was at that point that we saw the federal government via the FDA and industry intensify an information war. At the time, the federal government was allocating money to pharmaceutical companies to develop vaccines and antivirals. The feds gave Merck $356 for R&D to develop an antiviral, and another $1.2 billion in purchases, and the whole affair turned out to be a debacle with molnupiravir. Most recently, the drug was associated with SARS-CoV-2 mutations. But the market had to be cleared of alternatives, for the federally sanctioned COVID-19 countermeasures.
And then there was the claim that acknowledging ivermectin would have interrupted COVID-19 vaccine emergency use authorization, although at TrialSite we don't believe that was the case.
And in this case, there was nothing to lose other than Bucko’s life. She was in ever-worsening condition, and the ivermectin prescription continued. All countermeasures the hospital tried failed. Nonetheless, the hospital and its professional handlers did everything within their power to essentially end the patient’s life. That’s the net result. Read the story for a refresher.
The Decision
As cited above, the question about PREP Act liability and the wrongful death litigation was decided in the Supreme Court of the State of New York County of Nassau, by Hon Randy Sue Marber ruled in favor of the plaintiff with Scott D. Mantel, administrator for the estate of Deborah Bucko (plaintiff) versus South Nassau Communities Hospital d/b/a Mount Sinai South Nassau (defendant).
The legal issue litigated here was not a surprise; that the PREP Act would protect the hospital from any and all liability of caring for a COVID-19 patient.
But Judge Marber emphasized in this particular case PREP grants “immunity only from ‘any claim for loss that has a causal relationship with the administration to or use by an individual of a covered countermeasure’” Here, Marber cites “(Hudak v Elmcroft of Sagamore Hills, 58 F4th 845, 849 [6th Cir 2023] quoting 42 USC § 247d-6d [a][2][B]) and not with respect to “such a measure’s non[1]administration or non-use” (Hampton v California, 83 F4th 754, 763 [9th Cir 2023]), the latter of which is the central predicate upon which the Plaintiff’s complaint is based.”
Because of this unfolding case law, the New York State Supreme Court justice declared that the “factual claims alleged in the complaint, which must be accepted as true and afforded the benefit of every favorable intendment (Nonnon v City of New York, supra at 827), are unequivocally based upon South Nassau’s “non-administration” of Ivermectin and accordingly the immunity afforded under PREP is inapplicable (Hampton v California, supra at 763).”
So, if the matter involves an action or an issue that the PREP Act authors didn’t intend to address then the PREP Act does not apply. The wrongful death case ensues, and for attorney Ralph Lorigo profiled by TrialSite far earlier in the pandemic, this decision could open up a serious pathway for more victories. See our piece on April 2021 on Lorigo “An American Hero: Ralph C Lorigo Fights for Clients Rights including Access to Ivermectin for COVID-19 Patients at Risk.”
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Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com (TONGUE-TIED)
https://immigwatch.blogspot.com (IMMIGRATION WATCH)
https://awesternheart.blogspot.com (THE PSYCHOLOGIST)
http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs
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