Workers push back against vaccines
Federal judge bluntly rules for hospital system
HOUSTON – Jennifer Bridges, a registered nurse in Houston, is steadfast in her belief that it’s wrong for her employer to force hospital workers like her to get vaccinated against COVID-19 or say goodbye to their jobs. But that’s a losing legal argument so far.
In a stinging defeat, a federal judge bluntly ruled over the weekend that if employees of the Houston Methodist hospital system don’t like it, they can work elsewhere.
“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. 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.
The ruling Saturday in the closely watched legal case over how far health care institutions can go to protect patients and others against the coronavirus is believed to be the first of its kind in the U.S. But it won’t be the end of the debate.
Bridges 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.”
And other hospital systems around the country, including in Washington, D.C., Indiana, Maryland, Pennsylvania and most recently New York, have followed Houston Methodist and have also gotten pushback.
Legal experts say such vaccine requirements, particularly in a public health crisis, will probably continue be upheld in court as long as employers provide reasonable exemptions, including for medical conditions or religious objections.
The Houston Methodist employees
likened their situation to medical experiments performed on unwilling victims in Nazi concentration camps during World War II. The judge called that comparison “reprehensible” and said claims made in the lawsuit that the vaccines are experimental and dangerous are false.
“These folks are not being imprisoned. They’re not being strapped down. They’re just being asked to receive the vaccination to protect the most vulnerable in hospitals and other health care institutional settings,” said Valerie Gutmann Koch, an assistant law professor at the University of Houston Law Center.
Bridges is one of 178 Houston Methodist workers who were suspended without pay on June 8 and will be fired if they don’t agree by June 22 to get vaccinated.
The University of Pennsylvania Health System, the largest private employer in Philadelphia, and the Newyork-presbyterian hospital system have likewise indicated employees who aren’t fully vaccinated would lose their jobs.
Houston Methodist’s decision in April made it the first major U.S. health care system to require COVID-19 vaccinations
for workers. Many hospitals around the country, including Houston Methodist, already require other types of vaccines, including for the flu.
Houston Methodist’s president and CEO, Marc Boom, has said nearly 25,000 of the system’s more than 26,000 workers have been fully vaccinated against COVID-19.
“You did the right thing. You protected our patients, your colleagues, your families and our community. The science proves that the vaccines are not only safe but necessary if we are going to turn the corner against COVID-19,” Boom said in a statement to employees.
But Bridges, 39, and Kara Shepherd, 38, another nurse who is part of the lawsuit, say they don’t have confidence in the vaccine’s safety. They say that they have seen patients and co-workers have severe reactions and that there is insufficient knowledge about its long-term effects.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has said that while a small number of health problems have been reported, COVID-19 vaccines are safe and highly effective.
Both Bridges, who has worked 61⁄2 years at the medical-surgical in-patient unit at Houston Methodist’s hospital in the suburb of Baytown, and Shepherd, who has worked 71⁄2 years in the labor and delivery unit at a Methodist hospital in Houston, say they are not antivaccine, are not conspiracy theorists and are not making a political statement.
“To me, what this ultimately boils down to is freedom,” Shepherd said.
Their attorney, Jared Woodfill, said the hospital system is not allowing its workers to make their own decisions.
Indiana University Health, Indiana’s biggest hospital system, is requiring all its employees be fully vaccinated by Sept. 1. Just over 60% of its 34,000 employees have been vaccinated, spokesman Jeff Swiatek said.
Some employees in Indianapolis on Saturday protested the requirement.
Kasey Ladig, an intensive care nurse and outpatient coordinator in the bone marrow transplant unit at IU Health, said she quit the job she loved the day the policy was announced.
“I would love to hear something other than, ‘We trust the science,’ ” Ladig said.
Hospital employees and others have argued that such requirements are illegal because the COVID-19 vaccines are being dispensed under emergency use authorization from the Food and Drug Administration and have not received final FDA approval. But Koch said emergency use does not mean people are being experimented on, and she added that FDA approval is expected.
Allison K. Hoffman, a law professor at the University of Pennsylvania, said claims made by Houston Methodist employees that they are being used as human guinea pigs or that vaccine policy violates the Nuremberg Code, a set of rules for medical experimentation that were developed in the wake of Nazi atrocities, “are bordering on absurd.”
To avoid such fights, many employers are offering incentives for vaccinations.
Instead of requiring vaccines, the small health care system in Jackson, Wyoming, offered $600 bonuses to employees who got vaccinated before the end of May. That boosted vaccinations from 73% to 82% of the 840 employees at St. John’s Health, said spokeswoman Karen Connelly.
This June 19, we commemorate the 156th year of Juneteenth, a celebration of our nation’s most infamous deferred dream, the long prayed-for abolishment of slavery.
Although slavery had officially ended in northern states on Jan. 1, 1863, with Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, slaves in Galveston, Texas – a far-off corner of the Confederacy – carried on in servitude, not yet knowing they were free.
For nearly 21⁄2 years, as the Civil War raged on, they waited patiently and persevered despite their enslavement, holding fast to a deferred dream of freedom. On June 19, 1865, their hopes were suddenly realized when Union troops brought the good news to Galveston.
While Juneteenth has been celebrated in Black communities for many years, the holiday has been slow to spread across a broader swath of America.
That’s one of the many reasons I am so proud to work at Western Governors University, a Utah-based online university that recognizes Juneteenth as a holiday for its employees nationwide and focuses throughout the year on advancing equity.
Being an educator from Princeville, N.C., the oldest town incorporated by Black people in the United States, Juneteenth is very personal to me.
That history has forced me to reflect on the many barriers that still exist to hold us back and defer our dreams, barriers that so often lead to socioeconomic inequalities in every phase of daily life. I’m struck by the sad irony that the majority of slaves were Black and that many of those adversely impacted today by continuing inequalities are also Black.
These things register with me and make me even more convinced that the No. 1 solution to inequality is education, a place where I can use my voice to help others achieve their dreams.
As I grew up, my parents impressed on me the benefits of acquiring an education because it provides a plan and the pathway to a career, but most important because it provides a voice to implement change. The voice I use for change is educating as many students as I can – helping them move out of poverty by breaking down barriers and ensuring access to education.
I firmly believe that an affordable education today will provide a voice for years to come for those who have had their dreams deferred or have felt like caged birds, marginalized and powerless to succeed.
So this year, as we observe Juneteenth, celebrate the end of slavery and remember all that remains to done, I ask that we take time to reflect and dream – and then to enact change. That change can be learning more about Juneteenth, or by being kinder and gentler, or by enacting positive change that creates equality, especially educational equality.
As Chancellor of WGU Ohio, I love watching the role our university has played in helping more than 6,200 students graduate with bachelor’s and master’s degrees in the three years since our establishment in Ohio – and today with more than 4,200 students enrolled in WGU Ohio’s nursing and health care, business, information technology and teaching programs.
For many, that has required patience and perseverance, but it has led them to a path where their dreams are no longer deferred. That’s a year-round Juneteenth celebration to me.
K.L. Allen is chancellor of WGU Ohio, the state affiliate of the online, nonprofit Western Governors University.
When the Columbus Crew announced in 2015 that its stadium would bear the name of the Spanish insurance company Mapfre, fans might have wondered “Mapfre who?”
They might have had the same reaction Tuesday, when the Crew said its new Arena District stadium would be called Lower.com Field.
“Yeah, people may be wondering, ‘Who the heck is Lower?’ ” said Dan Snyder, the company’s founder and CEO, before Tuesday’s news conference announcing the partnership.
“We’re the best-kept secret in town. ... This Crew stadium announcement is our coming-out party.”
Lower might not be well known, but, unlike Mapfre, it is locally grown.
Snyder founded the company in December 2018, about four years after he started the mortgage company Homeside
Financial in New Albany.
While at Homeside, Snyder saw a need for a comprehensive online service for prospective homebuyers who aren’t sure where to begin.
“Our mission is to help people who want to build wealth through homeownership,” he said.
The result is Lower, which the company bills as a one-stop-shop for homebuyers and homeowners. Lower
proposal are similar to the ones she has raised about other developments proposed for the 665/104 area over the past few years.
“These roadways can't support the amount of traffic we have utilizing them today, let alone what we have coming our way,” she said.
That issue needs to be addressed “before we sign off on any more housing,” Houk said.
Pulte Homes can be expected “to build a great project,” Berry said. “Just not here,” he said.
The traffic concern is an issue for him, too, but a housing development would mar land that could be maintained as green wilderness, Berry said.
His vision for the Pulte project site always has been that funding from a Columbus and Franklin County Metro Parks levy could allow the land to be purchased and used as an extension of Scioto Grove Metro Park, he said.
Although council member Roby Schottke voted in favor of the preliminary development plan, he said he is concerned about the potential impact on traffic should the “S” curve be straightened out.
A large number of trucks already travel the roadway and take the curve, and that type of traffic would only increase if anticipated warehouse development in and to the south of the corridor comes to fruition, he said.
The “S” curve serves as “a trafficcalming device” to slow truck traffic down, Schottke said.
“If we straighten that up, the trucks will be humming through there,” he said. “I do believe we need to look closely at what we do to keep that curve there.”
Brian Mcdaniel, who lives on West River Road, said his backyard is at the curve, “so I know what everybody is talking about. There is a lot of traffic there.”
Last summer, a soybean truck tipped over at the curve, “and the soybeans are still there,” Mcdaniel said. “There's about a foot of mush that stinks.
“These are the problems we run into,” he said.
The guardrail at the “S” curve “gets busted up about once a month,” Mcdaniel said. “It's busted up now.”
The truck traffic will only get worse, he said, and the city should consider the traffic issues, including what to do with the curve, before allowing another major development to start building in the corridor.
As a son of a semitruck driver, council member Aaron Schlabach said, he understands that truck traffic can cause issues along the curve.
The roadway is not designed to handle large semis, and trucks often have to cross the double line to stay on the road, he said.
“I'm not a big fan of traffic, either,” Schlabach said.
But it seems that any type of residential development in Grove City brings a common refrain that something needs to be done about traffic and increasing green space, but nothing ever seems to move forward to address the issue, he said.
Pulte is proposing that about 30% of the development area should be green or open space, “which is fantastic,” Schlabach said.
With jobs being added to Grove City and the region, “we can't not have housing,” he said. “If we choke off housing, then we could end up with the same problem that large metro areas have where you have homelessness and joblessness and all the nightmares that go along with that.”
It's important for Grove City to offer more housing “to make sure we can maintain some positive changes to accompany the job creation the city has been working on,” Schlabach said.
Pulte is proposing to build 307 singlefamily lots on the north side of the development area and 92 patio homes on the south side.
The two subareas would be separated by a stream corridor that runs through the site.
The development would offer several benefits to the community, Hart said.
“We will try to permanently protect an outstanding natural area that exists on the site (the stream corridor), and we will try to connect (the development) to the regional trail system, including the Metro Park, to activate it for use by all residents in the region,” he said.
The development also would add diversify and update the city's housing stock to support the job creation that is occurring, Hart said.
The project also would provide the opportunity for the city “to take a deeper dive” into the traffic issue that this and other developments have raised, he said.
Now that the preliminary development concept has been approved, a more detailed development plan and zoning application will come later from Pulte.
afroman@thisweeknews.com