The Food and Drug Administration early Monday approved Pfizer’s two-dose vaccine for people 16 and older, a step beyond the emergency-use authorization under which the shot has been available since late 2020. The new update makes the vaccine eligible to be mandated. While Democrats have not been able to force a federal mandate, yet, businesses, cities, and governments have already begun to push the vaccine in anticipation.
They are being met with a massive push back according to several outlets around the US, including The Gainsville Sun:
[Florida] A lawsuit on behalf of more than 200 employees including police and firefighters was filed against the city of Gainesville, contending that the vaccination mandate is a violation of their rights of due process and equal protection.
In a preamble to the heart of the suit, attorney Jeff Childers said city officials once called the people filing the suit “heroes” for their work during the pandemic. A number of employees caught COVID-19, the suit states.
“They are now goats; scapegoats of failed City policy, scapegoats for failed political leaders and federal policies,” Childers wrote. “In its mad rush to solve an intractable problem not of the Plaintiffs’ making, the City has conceived an odious scheme to coerce the Plaintiffs into taking unwanted and unnecessary Covid vaccines by threatening their livelihoods, pensions, and dreams.”
Similar lawsuits are popping up all over the country and I expect a firestorm of more if it becomes federally mandated.
In Cincinnati, battle-weary hospital workers filed a lawsuit, labeling the requirement “an affront to human dignity and personal freedom” and said the hospitals “are causing health care workers to leave the field.”
Quoting from lawsuits filed by Eric Deters & Associates on behalf of 27 plaintiffs: “When there was no vaccine, the workers had to go to work. They were heroes. Now that there is a vaccine, they have to get the vaccine or be fired. Now they are ‘zeros.’”
Though the vaccine is not federally mandated yet, Biden pressured business owners and community leaders to uphold a mandate of their own, saying:
“I’m calling on more companies in the private sector to step up with vaccine requirements that will reach millions more people,” Biden said in remarks at the White House. “If you’re a business leader, a nonprofit leader, a state or local leader, who has been waiting for full FDA approval to require vaccinations, I call on you now to do that — require it.”
Earlier this month 1,200 first responders in Hawaii filed a lawsuit against the state over its vaccination policy for government workers.
