Legal Considerations for Businesses Reopening After the Pandemic

The hot issues in employment law continued to be covered by Kevin Price and Guest Contributor Hessam Parzivand in their monthly chat on employment law issues. Parzivand and Price discussed a case brought against Methodist Hospital in Houston that mandated that employees take the Covid-19 vaccine.  Parzivand stated on the program that there are very limited exceptions to the employment-at-will doctrine which would protect those who refuse to take an employer-mandated Covid-19 vaccine. The Methodist Hospital case cited the Nuremberg Code and stated that the employer was forcing its healthcare employees to be guinea pigs to attempt to argue that mandating the Covid-19 vaccine was illegal. Parzivand recently had received an inquiry from an employee who wanted to bring a similar case against her employer.

The Methodist Hospital case was recently decided in favor of the employer and can be used as a precedent for employers who want to mandate the Covid-19 vaccine be taken by their employees. Legal uncertainty still exists on this issue, because the Methodist Hospital case did not raise the issue of individuals who did not take the Covid-19 vaccine due to a medical disability or due to sincerely held religious beliefs. Methodist Hospital being decided does not foreclose employees from pursuing exceptions based on those grounds. Lodging religious objections are the best strategic path for employees who do not want to take the Covid-19 vaccine from a legal perspective. There are significant policy concerns from the employer’s perspective that employees could use alleged religious beliefs as an insincere way to get around Covid-19 restrictions, especially if they can make an argument that taking the Covid-19 vaccine necessarily involves the use of fetal stem cells.