A group of former United Airlines workers have filed suit against their former employer, claiming they were wrongly fired for refusing to take a Covid vaccine, and want their jobs back, plus $30 million, after it has been shown that the vaccine does not prevent infection or transmission of the coronavirus.
United is a major commercial airline based in Chicago with flights both domestically and internationally. It currently operates a fleet of about 834 aircraft, employing around 67,000 individuals.
In a new class action lawsuit, multiple named Plaintiffs and others, filed suit against United Airlines, Inc., and related defendants in Cook County Circuit Court on January 19. The lawsuit asserts violations of the Genetic Information Non-Disclosure Act (GINA), through alleged wrongful conduct against the named plaintiffs and others following their objection to and request for religious accommodations against United's coronovirus vaccine mandate.
According to the complaint, workers were either fired or threatened with termination when the airline refused to recognize their allegedly sincere religious objections to the company's order to receive a Covid-19 vaccine. The complaint asserts this constitutes a violation of Title VII, which protects religious freedoms.
If they weren't terminated, the lawsuit asserts they were put on indefinite unpaid furlough, and were shadowed by a constant fear of termination. According to the complaint, United considered this a reasonable accommodation.
The complaint claims United, upon granting religious accommodations, went a step further, requiring those workers wear "individually identifiable symbols," which the plaintiffs claim is a violation of GINA by visually segregating and identifying them from their peers as conscientious objectors, even making public disclosure to the public of their private health matters.
The plaintiffs assert this created a hostile and toxic work environment work in which employees were allegedly exposed to isolation, open discrimination and harassment by their peers and even the public.
The Covid vaccines United employees were offered are considered "misnomers" by definition, as the complaint asserts they are not traditional vaccines as understood by the general populace and in the medical community.
According to the complaint, traditional vaccines by definition are developed to allow one's cells to "learn" how to fight off a virus and produce immunity by injecting a recipient with whole or part of a harmless bacteria or virus.
The Coronovirus virus "vaccine" in contrast, uses various genetic material, allegedly untested on humans, designed to trigger an immune response that would supposedly reduce the symptoms of the virus if contracted, or block contracting the virus altogether, in theory.
The plaintiffs assert the vaccines United required its employees be subjected to are still unproven. They assert there is still no real-world evidence that would establish the vaccines have had any impact on reducing the spread of the virus or the rate at which individuals are infected.
Further, the complaint notes, the vaccines have not received full FDA approval, but were instead issued an Emergency Use Authorization (EAU) after the World Health Organization declared the Covid outbreak a "Public Health Emergency of International Concern" in late January 2020.
Plaintiffs claim United's vaccine mandate violated their religious rights, as it forced them to choose between keeping their jobs or violating their religious objections to an injection that they claimed amounts to "gene therapy" and was developed using genetic material obtained in part from aborted human fetuses.
They said this fundamentally differentiates Covid vaccines from traditional vaccines against diseases like chicken pox or measles.
Other companies have been forced to go to court to defend their vaccine mandates.
Employees at NorthShore University Health System, for instance, obtained a $10 million settlement from their employer to end their lawsuit against the north suburban hospital system over claims the company had sought to use the mandate to "purge" its ranks of religious employees.
The plaintiffs in the United case are asking the court to award them $30 million in damages, and to reinstate workers who were either fired or retired or separated from the company in lieu of dismissal under the vaccine mandate.
Plaintiffs are represented by John M. Pierce of John Pierce Law, of Woodland Hills, California.