Last week, all of us – especially workers and businesses – scored a big victory when a federal judge in Houston, Texas, told a registered nurse in the Houston Methodist hospital system that if she thought her freedom was threatened by her employer insisting that she be vaccinated against COVID-19, well – she was free to go work somewhere else.
“Methodist is trying to do their business of saving lives without giving them the COVID-19 virus. It is a choice made to keep staff, patients and their families safer. [Nurse Jennifer] Bridges can freely choose to accept or refuse a COVID-19 vaccine; however, if she refuses, she will simply need to work somewhere else,” U.S. District Judge Lynn Hughes wrote in dismissing a lawsuit filed by 117 Houston Methodist workers, including Bridges, over the vaccine requirement.
Bridges, who says she lacks confidence in the vaccines despite their demonstrated safety, said she and the others will take their case to the U.S. Supreme Court if they have to: “This is only the beginning. We are going to be fighting for quite a while.”
But legal experts say such vaccine requirements, particularly in a public health crisis, will probably continue to be upheld in courts as long as employers provide reasonable exemptions, including for medical conditions or religious objections.
Those were not Bridges’ excuses. “This is supposed to be America; you’re supposed to have civil rights and constitutional rights, your freedom of choice … Nobody should be forced to put anything into their body if they’re not OK with it,” she told Texas Monthly magazine at least a week before the judge’s ruling.