DALLAS (AP) — More than 150 employees at a Houston hospital system who refused to get the COVID-19 vaccine have been fired or resigned after a judge dismissed an employee lawsuit over the vaccine requirement.
Earlier this month, a federal judge threw out the lawsuit filed by 117 employees over the requirement. The hospital system’s decision in April to require the vaccine for workers made it the first major U.S. health care system to do so.
The Houston Methodist employees who filed the lawsuit likened their situation to medical experiments performed on unwilling victims in Nazi concentration camps during World War II. U.S. District Judge Lynn Hughes called that comparison “reprehensible” and said claims made in the lawsuit that the vaccines are experimental and dangerous are false.
A registered nurse who is the lead plaintiff in the lawsuit, Jennifer Bridges, has a new job working for a company that sends nurses into people’s homes.
The judges ruling is being appealed to the Fifth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
25,000 of the system’s more than 26,000 workers have been fully vaccinated.
This is a follow-up to “178 Texas Hospital Workers Suspended for Refusing COVID Vaccine”
