Not Good! Judge Tosses Nurse’s Vaccine Requirement Lawsuit Against Houston Methodist Hospital

A federal judge tossed a lawsuit filed by a nurse against Houston Methodist hospital over its requirement that all employees be vaccinated against Covid.

117 employees filed a lawsuit against a Houston-area hospital over its Covid-19 vaccine mandate.

Jennifer Bridges, a registered nurse at the hospital said that doctors are being forced from their practices and ultimately left with no choice but to abandon their patients.

The lawsuit argued the vaccine mandate violates the Nuremberg Code and US statutes that allow Americans to refuse “unapproved” treatments.

The employees sued The Methodist Hospital, the Methodist Hospital System and Houston Methodist The Woodlands Hospital.

David Bernard, the CEO of Houston Methodist San Jacinto Hospital told employees that they can find a job elsewhere if they refuse the experimental Covid vaccine.

“100% vaccination is more important than your individual freedom. Everyone [sic] of you is replaceable. If you don’t like what your [sic] doing you can leave and we will replace your spot,” Bernard told the employees.

U.S. District Judge Lynn Hughes of Houston, a Reagan appointee tossed out the lawsuit on Saturday and blasted Jennifer Bridges.

Merriam Webster
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/vaccine
HERE IS THE ORIGINAL PRE-2020 DEFINITION:

Definition of vaccine
1: a preparation that is administered (as by injection) to stimulate the body’s immune response against a specific infectious agent or disease: such as
a: an antigenic preparation of a typically inactivated or attenuated (see ATTENUATED sense 2) pathogenic agent (such as a bacterium or virus) or one of its components or products (such as a protein or toxin)
a trivalent influenza vaccine
oral polio vaccine
Many vaccines are made from the virus itself, either weakened or killed, which will induce antibodies to bind and kill a live virus. Measles vaccines are just that, weakened (or attenuated) measles viruses.
— Ann Finkbeiner et al.
… a tetanus toxoid-containing vaccine might be recommended for wound management in a pregnant woman if [greater than or equal to] 5 years have elapsed … .
— Mark Sawyer et al.
In addition the subunit used in a vaccine must be carefully chosen, because not all components of a pathogen represent beneficial immunological targets.
— Thomas J. Matthews and Dani P. Bolognesi

HERE IS THE 2020 ADDITION:

: a preparation of genetic material (such as a strand of synthesized messenger RNA) that is used by the cells of the body to produce an antigenic substance (such as a fragment of virus spike protein)
… Moderna’s coronavirus vaccine … works by injecting a small piece of mRNA from the coronavirus that codes for the virus’ spike protein. … mRNA vaccine spurs the body to produce the spike protein internally. That, in turn, triggers an immune response.
— Susie Neilson et al.
The revolutionary messenger RNA vaccines that are now available have been over a decade in development. … Messenger RNA enters the cell cytoplasm and produces protein from the spike of the Covid-19 virus.
— Thomas F. Cozza
Viral vector vaccines, another recent type of vaccine, are similar to DNA and RNA vaccines, but the virus’s genetic information is housed in an attenuated virus (unrelated to the disease-causing virus) that helps to promote host cell fusion and entry.
— Priya Kaur
NOTE: Vaccines may contain adjuvants (such as aluminum hydroxide) designed to enhance the strength and duration of the body’s immune response.

Lynn Hughes can be quite a piece of work, but he usually sees right through BS and he was right here. The plaintiffs had no case at all. The suit was filed under state law as a Sabine Pilot claim. That is a very narrow common-law exception to the Texas at-will employment doctrine, which allows a cause of action for wrongful termination of termination was solely due to the employee’s refusal to commit a crime. Getting a vaccine obviously isn’t a crime, so Sabine Pilot plainly had no application here under clear Texas Supreme Court precedent.

Hughes did get it wrong in one way, though: He shouldn’t have ruled on the merits at all, and instead should have remanded the case back to state court. The suit was originally filed in state court in Montgomery County, TX, and the hospital removed it on very shaky “federal question” grounds. But it was the job of the plaintiffs’ lawyer, Jared Woodfill, to file a motion to remand, and he didn’t.

The nurse may have recourse in state court as the Hospital has to follow state rules about employment that won’t go near constitutional guidelines. Indeed, the hospital would have had a tougher time I think in fending off such state employment rules as to what they can force and not force employees to do.

They won’t, because this was their state court lawsuit. It was filed in state court originally and then removed to federal court by the defendants, without any objection by the plaintiffs. Judges Hughes applied state law in his ruling.

Texas strongly presumes “at will” employment and has almost no protections against termination beyond those afforded by federal law.

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