Nov. 15, 2023 - Epoch Times
09:38
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| Good evening, and right before we dive into the main story, I'll quickly mention that if you are sick and tired of all the censorship on this platform, as well as all the other myriad of platforms out there, and if you're looking for a source of actual honest news, well, you're in luck, because the Epoch Times has recently extended its awesome sale on subscriptions, just 25 cents a week for the whole year, because the Epoch Times has recently extended its awesome sale on subscriptions, just 25 cents a week for the whole year, which, if you do the math, | |
| And so if you are indeed looking for a source of actual honest news, which oftentimes gets completely blacked out by the mainstream legacy news outlets, well, consider trying a subscription for yourself. | |
| I'll throw a link to the sale page. | |
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| Now, diving into today's main topic. | |
| Over, you can say, the last few weeks, there have been quite a few updates regarding the national fight against vaccine mandates. | |
| Because while most of the country has just sort of moved on, the reality is that for a span of about two years, workers in various fields across America were fired because they refused to get the shot. | |
| However, now many of these workers have filed lawsuits against the relevant government agencies who are responsible for the mandates, and because the justice system works rather slowly in the country, some of these lawsuits are only now beginning to actually get resolved. | |
| Let's go through some of them together, starting with the one over in New Jersey, right after, of course, you take a super quick moment to smash those like and subscribe buttons, which will force the algorithm to share this video out to ever, ever more people. | |
| Now, to give you a bit of backstory here, in the early part of 2022, the governor of New Jersey, Mr. | |
| Phil Murray, he's a Democrat, he issued an executive order regarding vaccine compliance in the state. | |
| Specifically, Executive Order No. | |
| 283 said, among several other things, the following, quote, Unvaccinated healthcare workers must obtain their first dose of the primary series of a COVID-19 vaccination by January 27th of 2022. | |
| All covered workers must provide adequate proof that they are up to date with their COVID-19 vaccination by February 28th of 2022. | |
| Covered workers who are not up to date with their vaccinations, or for whom vaccination status is unknown, or who have not provided sufficient proof of documentation, must be considered non-compliant for purposes of this order. | |
| And indeed, just like many other states across the nation, New Jersey implemented this vaccine mandate, and they began to enforce it. | |
| In the process, firing off many medical staff who refused to get the shot. | |
| And so, amidst this general backdrop, four New Jersey-based nurses filed a lawsuit against the governor's office, arguing that these mandates violate several of their constitutionally protected rights. | |
| Quote, The mandate violates the liberty and privacy rights protected by the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, including the right to refuse medical procedures and the right to not be medically surveilled by government actors. | |
| It also violates the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment and the Fourth Amendment Prohibition of Unreasonable Search and Seizure and the Procedural Due Process Clause. | |
| Furthermore, the nurses argued that although the executive order did technically allow for religious and medical exemptions, in practice, well, that was not what was happening. | |
| Instead, the nurses wrote in their case, quote, However, the state of New Jersey itself has mass-denied religious exemptions in state institutions, stating that accommodating people with religious exemptions would constitute an undue burden on the state because the employees with religious objections to the COVID-19 injections are a threat to the safety of others. | |
| And so this was the general argument being made by these nurses. | |
| However, the U.S. District Court in this particular case, he ruled against them, saying in part that they, quote, failed to demonstrate likelihood of success on the merits of their claim that the executive orders violate their liberty rights under the Due Process Clause of the 14th Amendment, and also, they failed to demonstrate immediate and irreparable injury. | |
| Now, how exactly it is that losing your job fails to qualify as an immediate and irreparable injury, well, that's anyone's guess. | |
| But regardless, that is how the lower court ruled, which is frankly not that uncommon. | |
| Many of these mandate cases, they get thrown out in the lower court before getting appealed, which is exactly what happened. | |
| These four nurses, they filed an appeal with the Third Circuit Court of Appeals. | |
| However, here's where things, you can say, get a little bit weird in this particular case. | |
| Because as the appeals process was playing itself out, vaccine mandates in other states began to fall, with the courts in several other states forcing the employers to rehire those who have been fired, as well as issue them back pay. | |
| And so, perhaps seeing the writing on the wall, in April of this year, which is again right in the middle of the appeals process, Governor Phil Murphy, the governor of New Jersey, he issued a new executive order lifting the vaccine mandate for healthcare workers. | |
| And the official reason for why he did this, at least according to the governor, is because it, quote, aligns the state of New Jersey with recent updates to federal requirements and reflects our different circumstances now as compared to the past few years. | |
| This made it such that the vaccine mandate at issue in this particular case was canceled. | |
| And several months later, the U.S. Third Circuit Court of Appeals, they dismissed the nurse's case altogether, declaring that their lawsuit was now a moot point, given the fact that the New Jersey governor decided to rescind the mandate. | |
| However, the nurses did not stop here. | |
| That's because even though in this particular case the mandate was done away with, they wanted to establish a concrete legal precedent for the future. | |
| And as such, the nurses filed an appeal all the way up with the U.S. Supreme Court, asking the highest court throughout their whole country to take up the case and clarify for the whole nation what powers a governor does and does not have in regards to any future vaccine mandates. | |
| Specifically, the nurses argued that regardless of what the lower court in this particular case said, quote, The vaccine mandate violated their rights under the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution, which encompasses their right to refuse to get a medical procedure and their right to privacy. | |
| They also said the rule violated the Fourteenth Amendment's Equal Protection Clause. | |
| However, after considering the case for several months, just yesterday, the US Supreme Court released an unsigned order saying that they will not be taking up the case. | |
| As you can see up on screen for yourself, the order simply says that the petition for review has been denied. | |
| And it really is worth mentioning That this is not the first time that the US Supreme Court has had the opportunity, but has also decided to not take up a challenge to vaccine mandates. | |
| For instance, quote, That particular mandate was later rescinded as the public health emergency ended earlier this year. | |
| And so, because of their refusal to take up this new case out of New Jersey, well, the question of whether or not American governors have the authority to implement vaccine mandates in the future, well, that is still up in the air. | |
| Regardless, though, as we alluded to earlier in the episode, When you look at it on a state-by-state basis, aside from the reluctance by the U.S. Supreme Court, when you look at it state-by-state, the various vaccine mandates have been getting clawed back, with many of them, with many of the disenfranchised workers actually receiving compensation in the form of back pay as well as forced rehirings. | |
| For instance, in a separate case over in New York City, a judge ruled back in September, which is just two months ago, that, quote, In that particular case, the New York State Supreme Court judge, he ruled that New York City's denial of religious accommodations was capricious, it was arbitrary, and it was illegal. | |
| Here's part of what he wrote in his order. | |
| Quote, Likewise, | |
| there was a case over in the state of Illinois, wherein you had a group of about 500 healthcare workers file a lawsuit against one of the big health systems in the state, alleging that the system would not grant them religious exemptions. | |
| And the Illinois court ruled in favor of the employees, awarding them a cool $10 million legal settlement. | |
| And you have similar cases playing themselves out across the entirety of this country. | |
| However, the U.S. Supreme Court, well, they have once again passed on this opportunity to take up this particular type of case, a vaccine mandate case, leaving the door open for more vaccine mandates sometime in the future, if another pandemic were to be declared. | |
| If you'd like to go through any of the cases that we discussed in today's episode, including the details of the case that came out of New Jersey, I'll throw all my research notes down in the description box below this video for you to peruse at your own leisure. | |
| And then lastly, as I mentioned at the top of the episode as well, if you are indeed sick and tired of all the censorship on this platform, with or without the federal government's involvement, well you're in luck, because the Epoch Times has recently extended its awesome sale and subscriptions, just 25 cents a week for the whole year, which if you do the math, it works itself out to just be a single dollar a month. | |
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| And then, until next time, I'm your host, Roman, from the Epic Times. |
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