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Dec. 26, 2021 - Epoch Times
22:58
Judge Sides with 16 Unvaccinated Students, Rules Against University Mandate | Facts Matter
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Good evening, and Happy Columbus Day.
Or, as my Google Calendar likes to call it, Happy Indigenous People's Day.
And to start with, over in Michigan, there were two cases regarding the vaccine mandates that recently got a decision from the court.
and the outcomes of these two cases were quite different from one another.
In one of the cases, which was against Michigan State University, the judge ruled that having natural immunity to the virus does not exempt an individual from being forced to get the shot.
However, over at Western Michigan University, the court there actually sided in favor of the students and ruled that despite being unvaccinated, they cannot be stopped from playing sports.
Let's go through these two different cases together, and then let's sit down and talk with Ms. Maria, Maria Cabal, who is a senator from Colombia, and hear about the communist insurgency that's destroying her country, and potentially how a similar process is playing itself out here in the United States.
This is your daily Facts Matter update, and I'm your host, Roman, from the Epoch Times.
And now let's begin today's discussion by talking a bit about vaccine mandates.
Four days ago, Kaiser Permanente, which is one of the largest healthcare systems in all of America, they placed about 2,200 of their unvaccinated employees nationwide on unpaid leave.
Now, Kaiser Permanente is a fairly large company.
they have over 216,000 employees in total nationwide.
And so this 2,200 that were suspended, that represents only about 1% of their total workforce.
And according to a statement released by the company, these employees are being given until December the 1st to be vaccinated, with the assumption being that if they don't comply, they will be terminated.
Here's part of a statement by Kaiser Permanente in regard to these suspended individuals.
And please note that it looks like about 7% of their employees qualify for some form of a vaccine exemption, either a religious or medical exemption, and that's what they're referring to here.
So it says here, quote, Now we here at the Epoch Times, we did reach out to Kaiser Permanente for comment on their new policy, but we have yet to hear back.
Although, in my opinion, if they did get back to us, they would likely urge you to take a moment to smash that like button for the YouTube algorithm.
And now, let's move on over and discuss the vaccine mandates at the federal level.
According to a White House official, even though Joe Biden's vaccine mandates for all federal workers as well as federal contractors, it does allow for some religious and medical exemptions, he said, meaning that this White House official said, that agencies can still fire these people in places where no other safety protocols are enough.
Let me just reiterate that.
According to the White House's official position, federal employees as well as federal contractors who already qualified for either a religious or medical exemption, they can still be fired over the vaccine mandate.
Here's in fact what the new guidance that was published over on the federal government's website.
Here's what it says.
There may be circumstances in which an agency determines that the nature of an employee's job responsibilities requires heightened safety protocols if they are provided with a legally required exception.
In some cases, the nature of the employee's job may be such that an agency determines that no safety protocol other than vaccination is adequate.
In such circumstances, the agency may deny the requested accommodation.
However, in terms of the lucky employees who get to keep their jobs without being fired over their exemptions, they will still receive treatment that's different from the other employees, that's different from their co-workers.
Specifically, these unvaccinated employees, they will have to maintain social distance, And so, these unvaccinated workers will be easy to spot in the workplace.
They'll be the ones who are eating lunch by themselves while wearing a mask underneath their chins.
And in terms of a caveat in these rules for the people that have natural immunity, well, that caveat doesn't exist.
If you have natural strong antibodies to the virus because you had a previous infection, well, you still better get the shot if you'd like to keep your job, at least according to the federal government.
However, there are lawsuits that are currently working their way through the courts right now which are challenging exactly this aspect of the vaccine mandates, the fact that they don't offer accommodation for natural immunity.
And along that line, three days ago, one of these cases was officially denied by a federal judge out in Michigan.
To be specific, this particular case was filed against Michigan State University.
And one of their employees, they filed this lawsuit over the school's vaccine mandate.
This employee, she argued that she had already contracted COVID in the past, she had recovered, and she even presented two antibody tests to the university showing that her previous infections offered her strong protection.
Even her own doctor said that she did not need to get a vaccine at this time.
However, regardless of her strong natural immunity, and regardless of her doctor's note, this employee faces the prospect of being terminated by the university for not complying with the school's vaccine mandate, which for a reference says that all students and staff must get the shot unless they have a medical or religious exemption.
I guess with the medical exemption, not including natural immunity, even with a doctor's note.
And so, she filed this lawsuit and has been working its way through the court system, and three days ago, a federal judge declined the case.
The judge, who by the way is named Paul Maloney, he's an appointee of George W. Bush, and he ruled that the vaccine mandate did not violate this woman's fundamental right, and he pointed to a 1905 Supreme Court ruling as the basis of his decision.
Here's part of what this court order from this judge said.
This court must apply the law from the Supreme Court.
Jacobson essentially applied rational basis review and found that the vaccine mandate was rational in protecting the public health and public safety.
The court cannot ignore this binding precedent.
Now, we here on this program have on previous episodes already discussed several studies which show that natural immunity not only exists, but also offers robust protection against the virus, with some studies even showing that natural immunity protection can be as much as 13 times greater than the vaccine, especially when you look at the results over a long time frame.
Regardless, in terms of the next steps in this particular case, the lawyers who are representing this employee said that they are considering legal alternatives.
Here's a statement from the lawyers.
individuals with natural acquired immunity to COVID-19 who are subject to irrational vaccine mandates.
While we are disappointed by today's order, we are committed to fighting for the right of COVID-recovered Americans to decline a medically unnecessary vaccine without having to sacrifice their livelihoods.
Likely, their legal alternatives will be to continue to work up the chain and hopefully to eventually reach the Supreme Court.
Now, we here at the Epoch Times, we did reach out to the Michigan State University for comment on this case, but we have yet to hear back.
However, three days ago, there was another case related to vaccine mandates over in Michigan in which the judge actually ruled in favor of the plaintiffs.
What happened there was...
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And now Roman in the studio, back to you.
Now, while we're discussing this vaccine mandate lawsuit over in Michigan, Let's discuss another case in which the judge actually ruled in favor of the plaintiffs.
Three days ago, a court ruled in favor of 16 unvaccinated athletes from Western Michigan University saying that they can play sports even in spite of the vaccine mandate that's being imposed on all of the intercollegiate athletes at that school.
Specifically, in a unanimous decision, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, they ruled that the university violated these athletes' First Amendment rights when they both ignored as well as denied their requests for religious exemption.
Here's specifically what the court said in their decision, in part.
The university put plaintiffs to the choice.
Get vaccinated or stop fully participating in intercollegiate sports.
By conditioning the privilege of playing sports on plaintiffs' willingness to abandon their sincere religious beliefs, the university burdened their free exercise rights.
Furthermore, this court order also reaffirmed that the First Amendment, as incorporated through the 14th Amendment, prevents a state from prohibiting the free exercise of religion.
For reference, by the way, the 14th Amendment, it also guarantees equal protections under the law.
And so, while the vaccine mandate would have barred these athletes from either playing in games or even practicing with their teams unless they get vaccinated...
This new decision by the court, it actually reverses that possibility, and these athletes can once again play their sports.
Now, we here at the Epoch Times, we reached out to the lawyer who is representing these student-athletes.
His name is David Kalman.
He's an attorney with the Great Lakes Justice Center, and he told us that, it's a great win for our clients and for religious liberty.
We trust all parties can move forward in a spirit of cooperation to uphold the important constitutional issues at stake.
Now, we hear at the Epoch Times We also reached out to the university for comment on this case, but we have yet to hear back.
But I think you see what is happening here.
With the different cases that are currently working their way through the courts, with many of them setting new precedents like these two here in Michigan, we are essentially seeing in real time what the future will be shaped into here in America.
Will it go towards a more collectivist path with people being forced to do things against their wills for the so-called public good as determined by government officials?
Or will it go towards a direction of more personal liberty where people are free to choose what they do or don't do regardless of government coercion?
We'll just have to see how all of this plays out.
If you'd like to read more about these cases over in Michigan regarding these two lawsuits, I'll throw all those links into the description box below this video so you can read them for yourself.
And all I ask in return is that you take a quick moment, if you haven't already, to smash that like button for the YouTube algorithm.
And now, let's move on over and discuss the communist insurgencies happening in South America.
For a while now, many people have compared what's been playing out here in the United States with what's been happening over in South America for the past few decades.
Specifically, with the 2020 Summer of Love, with the BLM riots, the Antifa protests, and the out-and-out communists marching through the streets of cities like Portland, Seattle, New York, Los Angeles, and so on, Many people are seeing similarities to what's been happening in places like Venezuela, Peru, Bolivia, and Colombia.
And so, while I was down south, I took the opportunity to sit down and speak with Ms.
Maria Cabal, who is a senator in Colombia, and she gave us an idea of what's been happening there in regards to the communist forces and communist guerrillas who are attempting to either disrupt or even subvert their society.
Take a look.
Can you tell the viewers who might be watching this and might not be familiar with what's been happening in Colombia over the last few decades about the Marxist problems that they've been suffering with, for instance, the FARC? Yes, we have been suffering since about more than 60 years, a communist attack promoted by Cuba.
Cuba trained guerrillas in the 70s, but we have three different guerrillas beforehand, FARC, ELN, EPL, and then M19, who got trained in Cuba by Fidel Castro.
We have been fighting against them, and when President Uribe arrived into power in 2002, we had 30,000 people killed Per year, which was, you know, it was the biggest amount we had had in history.
After Uribe, he recovered the country.
He returned the security for the people and the people could work again.
So after him came President Santos and Santos betrayed Uribe and decided to sign a peace accord with FARC. And currently we have FARC in Congress legalized and FARC still Violent rural areas and split in two different movements.
And we have again ELN empowered and we have IPL who was destroyed completely.
Again, all of them fighting for the cocaine routes.
The cocaine, all the routes getting to Venezuela or through the Pacific.
And today they're doing a strike because they want to change the elections.
The elections are next year in March.
They want to twist the country up, and they want to take advantage of it.
Look what happened in Peru.
In Peru, the Foro de Sao Paulo, which is the leftist global group that changed elections and trapped countries, acted in Peru, and they're doing so in Colombia.
And this is a global problem, because you're facing almost the same here, the same riots, but here you don't have the money from the guerrilla, the cocaine money.
Wow.
So the FARC who are in Congress, in the Colombian lawmakers, how are they reacting to these riots?
Are they condemning them?
Are they fighting back?
Or are they more of like kind of quiet and accepting them?
No, they are promoting them.
It's amazing because all this is impunity.
The peace accord gave, you know, child rapists, the horrible terrorists that had more than 400 years to be in jail.
They are now in Congress and in their Twitter they promoted because they said that the government is dictatorship, the government is a commit genocide.
So all of this is a strategy of inverting, of twisting upside down the truth.
That's what the communists do.
What is really amazing is that they got 180 fake news through the media.
And in three days, the international human rights organizations got back attacking our police to defund the police, to change the police.
So it's the same guidance of what they're doing around the world.
Wow.
So what's the goal of these groups?
I mean, you said they're Marxist groups.
Are their goal to overtake Colombia and make it into essentially the People's Republic of Colombia?
Yes, of course.
They want power.
So at this moment, they are working on promoting juvenile, like frontline, like the Antifas.
We have the same Antifas there as here.
We have the same symbols.
So they want to promote it.
But what happened is that the rural war, Change after the peace accord into an urban war.
These youth are trained through guerrillas.
These are militia, but they're uncovered as being juvenile protesters.
Wow.
So at Cali, where they have been waging essentially a mini-war, would you call that?
Yes, completely.
Cali was like Kosovo war.
They blocked different neighbors.
And nobody could even go out to buy even sugar, essential food.
Nobody.
The ambulances were stopped.
There were two babies who died because they couldn't get into the hospitals.
Oxygen for COVID patients couldn't get because they blocked the port from Cali to the Pacific Ocean is two hours.
Our main port is Buenaventura.
They block it.
So if you see it in a map, they do a war of blocking the movement of the people, controlling the territory.
Wow.
Besides blocking the movements, did they destroy property?
Completely.
They destroyed public property.
80% of the public transportation, which is used by people who does not have a car, they destroy it.
And private property, too.
They were burning policemen alive.
And internationally, when you see their reactions, the reactions say, oh, it's police brutality.
These are pacific protesters.
It's the same what is happening everywhere.
You see the truth and media twisted because of fake news.
They control the network.
Wow.
How long did this last?
Or is it still ongoing?
It has been two months.
It's still ongoing?
It's still ongoing.
Less, because finally the police and the troops had to remove the blockades.
But this is still there.
And they're a threat, you know?
They're a threat.
They are saying that they're going to meet all these front lines from Antifa's front line.
They're going to meet in Bogota.
They move the Indians from the south to block different parts, so you cannot do anything because if you harm an Indian, they will say that you're a genocide, that you're killing an ethnic group.
So that's a strategy, because that was going to be my next question.
As they were doing this for two months, I mean, I'm sure Colombia has a strong police force and a strong, at least, internal military.
What was stopping them from disbanding these people was the fact that they would use that narrative saying, hey, you're committing genocide by attacking us.
Yes.
Is that accurate?
Exactly like that.
But the problem is that our government lasts too long to take the decision to remove the blockets, and majors are playing the role.
Majors take advantage of the blockets to ask money for the central government, and if you keep a blockage, all the companies fall down.
They broke up.
You know, that sounds very familiar to what's happening in a few cities here in America, actually.
It's like Portland, for instance, or in Seattle.
Like Shaq in Seattle.
Yeah.
But we have several Shaqs there.
For example, Cali's mayor are trying to legalize it through a decree.
Yeah.
Saying that this is like a pacific manifestation and they can have it.
And it's completely a violent behavior.
But it's exactly...
Look, if you have that shack, a place that they built in Seattle, it's the same but with drugs, with prostitution.
You have all the bad behavior among it.
And no authority at all.
What's the Venezuelan connection here?
Yes, because Maduro, Nicolás Maduro, remember that he is working with China, with Russia.
Russia is training with mercenaries, military, Venezuelan military in the border.
We got the picture by satellite.
I know the U.S. government has the pictures.
And they have also Iran.
Hezbollah is protected since 13 years ago.
They share with Iran.
They share a flight every day from Tehran to Caracas.
So they need Colombia to fall.
And that's what they're doing.
They're sending money and police catch money sent from the border.
They're protecting ELN and FARC. ELN and FARC controls many states in Venezuela and they steal the gold that gets them into Turkey, into Hong Kong and change it for food in Mexico with the kingpins that owns food companies and then return to the population.
So it's a whole mafia strategy.
Well, so last question.
So you're a senator within Colombia.
What is the hope?
Is there anything that you can do?
Is there anything that you're working on?
Of course.
If we don't understand that this is a global threat for you in the US, for every one of us to lose our freedom, we will lose it.
We have to know that the head of this is Foro de Sao Paulo, which has been built by Lula da Silva and Chávez, you know, former Hugo Chávez who's already dead.
So they did this and they created the international progressists.
So all these former presidents, who most of them were condemned in jail for corruption, created a group to distort To distort the Latin American countries, to change it, and to move it to socialism of the 21st century.
But that's communist with another coverage.
It's pure Marxism.
Yeah.
Well, I'm glad we're able to tell the story and let people know that this is not just an American phenomenon.
Maria, thank you so much.
Thank you very much, Roman.
If you'd like to read more about what's happening over in Colombia, I'll throw some resources into the description box so you can go deeper into them yourself, specifically about the FARC and the other communist forces which are attempting to subvert their society.
And again, all I ask in return is that you take a quick moment to smash that like button so this video can potentially be shared out to thousands of more people, letting the truth be known far and wide.
And lastly, on a similar point to what Ms.
Maria discussed over in Colombia, I'd highly recommend that you head on over to Epic TV and check out this awesome latest episode of American Thought Leaders where Jan sat down with a senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation and they discussed the Marxist ideology which underpins the major BLM organizations across the United States.
Here's a trailer for that great episode.
When you Google Black Lives Matter, Google doesn't take you to a concept.
It takes you to the organization founded by Alicia Garza, Opal Tometi, and Patrice Colores.
Inside the ideological underpinnings of the Black Lives Matter organizations...
They've all understood that the family needs to be dismantled.
Today I sit down with Heritage Foundation senior fellow Mike Gonzalez, author of BLM, The Making of a New Marxist Revolution.
When you separate kids according to affinity groups, that is illegal.
That's not allowed by Title VI of the Civil Rights Act.
This is American Thought Leaders, and I'm Jan Jekielek.
If you want to check out that phenomenal episode, as well as all the other awesome content over on Epic TV, It'll be right there at the very top of the description box.
I hope you click on it.
I hope you check it out.
I hope you subscribe.
And I hope that you join us on this journey of exploring this beautiful, beautiful world through honest journalism that is based in truth and tradition.
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And then, until next time, I'm your host, Roman from the Epic Times.
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