Employer Letter Example: Vaccine Mandate Objection
No authorship claim or copyright asserted . . . A letter that
also came to me via a route like a letter in a bottle.
Dear Boss,
First,
I request a religious exemption. "Each of the manufactures of the Covid
vaccines currently available developed and confirmed their vaccines using fetal
cell lines, which originated from aborted fetuses. (https://lozierinstitute.org/an-ethics-assessment-of-covid-19-vaccine-programs/) For example, each of the currently available Covid vaccines
confirmed their vaccine by protein testing using the abortion-derived cell line
HEK-293. (https://lozierinstitute.org/an-ethics-assessment-of-covid-19-vaccine-programs/) Partaking in a vaccine made from aborted fetuses makes me
complicit in an action that offends my religious faith. As such, I cannot, in
good conscience and in accord with my religious faith, take any such Covid
vaccine at this time. In addition, any coerced medical treatment goes against
my religious faith and the right of conscience to control one’s own medical
treatment, free of coercion or force. Please provide reasonable accommodation
to my belief, as I wish to continue to be a good employee, helpful to the team.
Equally,
compelling any employee to take any current Covid-19 vaccine violates federal
and state law, and subjects the employer to substantial liability risk,
including liability for any injury the employee may suffer from the vaccine.
Many employers have reconsidered issuing such a mandate after more fruitful
review with legal counsel, insurance providers, and public opinion advisors of
the desires of employees and the consuming public. Even the Kaiser Foundation
warned of the legal risk in this respect. (https://www.kff.org/coronavirus-covid-19/issue-brief/key-questions-about-covid-19-vaccine-mandates/)
Three key concerns: first, informed consent is the guiding light
of all medicine, in accord with the Nuremberg Code of 1947; second, the
Americans with Disabilities Act proscribes, punishes, and penalizes employers
who invasively inquire into their employees' medical status and then treat
those employees differently based on their perceived medical status, as the
many AIDS-related cases of decades ago fully attest; and third, international
law, Constitutional law, specific statutes, and the common law of torts all
forbid conditioning access to employment, education, or public accommodations
upon coerced, invasive medical examinations and treatment, unless the employer
can fully provide objective, scientifically validated evidence of the threat
from the employee and how no practicable alternative could possibly suffice to
mitigate such supposed public health threat and still perform the necessary
essentials of employment. As one federal court just recently held, the
availability of reasonable accommodations like accounting for prior infection,
antibody testing, temperature checks, remote work, other forms of testing, and
the like suffice to meet any institution’s needs in lieu of masks, public
shaming and forced injections of foreign substances into the body that the FDA
admits we do not know the long-term effects of.
For instance, the symptomatic can be self-isolated. Hence,
requiring vaccinations only addresses one risk: dangerous or deadly
transmission, by the asymptomatic or pre-symptomatic employee, in the employment
setting. Yet even government official Mr. Fauci admits, as scientific studies
affirm, asymptomatic transmission is exceedingly and "very rare."
Indeed, initial data suggests the vaccinated are just as, or even much more,
likely to transmit the virus as asymptomatic or pre-symptomatic. Hence, the
vaccine solves nothing. This evidentiary limitation on any employer's
decision-making, aside from the legal and insurance risks of forcing
vaccinations as a term of employment without any accommodation or even
exception for the previously infected (and thus better protected), is the
reason most employers wisely refuse to mandate the vaccine. This doesn't even
address the arbitrary self-limitation of the pool of talent for the employer:
why reduce your own talent pool, when many who refuse invasive inquiries or
risky treatment may be amongst your most effective, efficient, and profitable
employees?
This
right to refuse forced injections, such as the Covid-19 vaccine, implements the
internationally agreed legal requirement of Informed Consent established in the
Nuremberg Code of 1947. (http://www.cirp.org/library/ethics/nuremberg/). As the Nuremberg Code established, every person must "be
able to exercise free power of choice, without the intervention of any element
of force, fraud, deceit, duress, overreaching, or other ulterior forms of
constraint or coercion; and should have sufficient knowledge and comprehension
of the elements of the subject matter involved as to enable him to make an
understanding and enlightened decision" for any medical experimental drug,
as the Covid-19 vaccine currently is.
Second, demanding employees divulge their personal medical
information invades their protected right to privacy and discriminates against
them based on their perceived medical status, in contravention of the Americans
with Disabilities Act. (42 USC §12112(a).) Indeed, the ADA prohibits employers
from invasive inquiries about their medical status, and that includes questions
about diseases and treatments for those diseases, such as vaccines. As the EEOC
makes clear, an employer can only ask for medical information if the employer
can prove the medical information is both job-related and necessary for the
business.
(https://www.eeoc.gov/laws/guidance/questions-and-answers-enforcement-guidance-disability-related-inquiries-and-medical). An employer
that treats an individual employee differently based on that employer’s belief
the employee’s medical condition impairs the employee is discriminating against
that employee based on perceived medical status disability, in contravention of
the ADA. The employer must have proof that the employer cannot keep the
employee, even with reasonable accommodations, before any adverse action can be
taken against the employee. If the employer asserts the employee’s medical
status (such as being unvaccinated against a particular disease) precludes
employment, then the employer must prove that the employee poses a “safety
hazard” that cannot be reduced with reasonable accommodation. The employer must
prove, with objective, scientifically validated evidence, that the employee
poses a materially enhanced risk of serious harm that no reasonable
accommodation could mitigate. This requires the employee's medical status to
cause a substantial risk of serious harm, a risk that cannot be reduced by any
other means. This is a high, and difficult burden, for employers to meet. Just
look at all prior cases concerning HIV and AIDS, when employers discriminated
against employees based on their perceived dangerousness and ended up paying
millions in legal fees, damages, and fines.
Third,
conditioning continued employment upon participating in a medical experiment
and demanding disclosure of private, personal medical information, may also
create employer liability under other federal and state laws, including HIPAA,
FMLA, and applicable state tort law principles, including torts prohibiting and
proscribing invasions of privacy and battery. Indeed, any employer mandating a
vaccine is liable to their employee for any adverse event suffered by that
employee. The CDC records reports of the adverse events already reported to
date concerning the current Covid-19 vaccine. (https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/vaccines/safety/vaers.html)
Finally,
forced vaccines constitute a form of battery, and the Supreme Court long made
clear "no right is more sacred than the right of every individual to the
control of their own person, free from all restraint or interference of
others." (https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/141/250)
With Regards,
Employee
of the Year,
Thomas Paine
