Every weekend, the prospect of hitting 800,000 dead Americans recedes, and every Thursday morning, it looks a lot closer.
And in the meantime, we continue to see the teeth of a legal system that occasionally works the way we need it to work.
WaPo: (freebie)
Unvaccinated Oregon workers who had covid-19 argued they don’t need a vaccine. A judge denied their request.
An Oregon federal judge has denied an emergency motion brought by seven unvaccinated workers who sought to block the state’s vaccine mandate or create an exemption for people like themselves who already had the virus and argue they do not need to be vaccinated.
U.S. District Judge Ann Aiken wrote in her opinion Tuesday that the U.S. Constitution offers no fundamental right for someone to refuse a vaccination, adding that the shots are in Oregon’s best interest to help slow the spread of the virus. In her 26-page opinion, Aiken said that people’s safety was more important than whatever individual challenges unvaccinated workers might face by not getting immunized.
“Whatever hardships Plaintiffs face in choosing between accepting vaccination or leaving their employment are substantially outweighed by the interests and needs of the State of Oregon and her people,” Aiken wrote.
Aiken is the second federal judge in the state this week to block an emergency motion from unvaccinated workers attempting to avoid the immunization requirement put in place by Oregon Gov. Kate Brown (D). It is the sixth time that a federal or state court judge in Oregon has denied an effort to stop the vaccine mandate.
Like her colleague U.S. District Judge Michael H. Simon, who ruled in a separate case Monday, Aiken decided that the seven unvaccinated workers failed to show that they would suffer irreparable harm from the mandate.
“The benefits inherent in requiring all healthcare personnel, school staff, and state executive employees to be vaccinated are clear and obvious, both in terms of protecting the newly vaccinated workers themselves and, of at least equal importance, in protecting the people around them,” she wrote.
Aiken is the second federal judge in the state this week to block an emergency motion from unvaccinated workers attempting to avoid the immunization requirement put in place by Oregon Gov. Kate Brown (D). It is the sixth time that a federal or state court judge in Oregon has denied an effort to stop the vaccine mandate.
Like her colleague U.S. District Judge Michael H. Simon, who ruled in a separate case Monday, Aiken decided that the seven unvaccinated workers failed to show that they would suffer irreparable harm from the mandate.
“The benefits inherent in requiring all healthcare personnel, school staff, and state executive employees to be vaccinated are clear and obvious, both in terms of protecting the newly vaccinated workers themselves and, of at least equal importance, in protecting the people around them,” she wrote.
They filed a lawsuit last month arguing for the state to carve out an exception for them, and people like them, who have some degree of natural immunity after they were infected with the virus. Attorney Rebekah Millard wrote in the plaintiffs’ motion that the state forcing previously infected workers to get vaccinated violated their “privacy, bodily autonomy, and personal liberty.” The group contended that the governor’s mandate forced workers like them “who have robust natural immunity, to choose between their health, their personal autonomy, and their careers.”
While the employees argued that getting vaccinated “would involve more risks than benefits” and they were “exceedingly unlikely” to spread the virus to others, a study from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention last month found that unvaccinated people who recovered from covid are more than twice as likely to catch the coronavirus again compared to fully vaccinated people who were previously infected.
Melissa Sutton, the medical director of respiratory viral pathogens for the Oregon Health Authority, supported the CDC’s findings in sworn testimony. Sutton wrote to Aiken that immunity after infection is “not as durable or reliable as the protection” provided by the vaccines. She added that the durability of such immunity varies widely between individuals compared to protection from immunization.
Though Millard argued this week that Oregon did not acknowledge “a fundamental right to bodily integrity,” the state’s attorney, Christina Beatty-Walters, pointed to the U.S. Supreme Court decision that community vaccination does not violate the Constitution.
“They hinge their whole case here on the existence of a fundamental right, but there isn’t support for the existence of such a right. In fact, all of the case law goes the other way and supports the state in this case,” she said to the Register-Guard. “Many, many courts … have concluded that there’s no fundamental right to refuse a vaccination required by state or local officials.”
In her opinion, Aiken noted that most of the seven workers who brought the lawsuit against the state either have already received an exception to the mandate or are awaiting a decision on an exemption request. Two did not apply for an exemption and one had theirs denied, Aiken wrote.
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