The Shriners Hospital for Children-Erie fired four employees for refusing to get vaccinated for COVID-19 during the pandemic.
The employees sued in federal court in Erie. They claimed the terminations were unjust.
The four have lost twice ― once before a judge and now before a federal appeals court.
The Philadelphia-based 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has affirmed Chief U.S. District Judge Cathy Bissoon’s dismissal of the case in December 2024, about a year after the employees sued.
Four former employees of the Shriners Hospital for Children-Erie lost a federal lawsuit they filed after the Shriners fired them for refusing to get vaccinated for COVID-19 in 2021.
The 3rd Circuit agreed with Bissoon’s finding that the employees failed to prove that the Shriners, a private facility, is a “state actor” that violated the employees’ constitutional and statutory rights.
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The plaintiffs sued under Section 1983, a federal law that allows individuals to sue federal, state or local officials over civil rights violations. The defendants in Section 1983 cases must be “state actors” — typically police officers, other government employees or private entities that perform a public function or work in concert with the government.
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The employees’ lawsuit hinged on the “state actor” claim. The employees cited no religious exemptions or medical exceptions in refusing to get vaccinated. They argued that the Shriners’ vaccine policy violated their rights because it involved “investigational” drugs.
The 3rd Circuit and Bissoon rejected the plaintiffs’ argument that the Shriners became a “state actor” by imposing a vaccine mandate, which the plaintiffs claimed is a public function.
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“Not so,” a three-judge panel of the 3rd Circuit said in a unanimous eight-page opinion issued April 14. “States do not have the exclusive authority to impose vaccine mandates.
“Employers in various industries routinely require employees to take various vaccinations, and such policies do not magically transform private employers into state actors.”
The 3rd Circuit also rejected the claim about “investigational drugs” and said the vaccines at issue received full approval from the Food and Drug Administration.
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The ex-employees who sued are Beth Boyd, Janet Noland, Michelle Peck and Carly Robson. They refused to get a COVID-19 vaccine under a policy the Shriners instituted in September 2021, according to the 3rd Circuit ruling.
The plaintiffs’ professions are not listed in the ruling, though the ruling states that the Shriners’ 2021 vaccine mandate required “certain employees, such as medical professionals who work with patients and employees who enter hospital buildings, to be fully vaccinated by the end of the year.”
The employees sued in November 2023 by filing a 107-page lawsuit. The case was assigned to Bissoon, who is based in Pittsburgh but hears some Erie cases.
The plaintiffs’ lawyer is David Schexnaydre, of Louisiana who specializes in vaccine litigation. Pittsburgh-based lawyers with the law firm Eckert Seamans represented the Shriners Hospital for Children-Erie, at 1645 W. Eighth St., and several Shriners officials who were also named as defendants.
As Bissoon noted in her dismissal ruling, Schexnaydre has filed similar lawsuits throughout the United States. Those cases and others like it, Bissoon said, also fell short.
“Plaintiffs’ lawsuit,” Bissoon said in her ruling, “is one of numerous cases raising analogous claims filed throughout the country by employees terminated for failure to comply with similar COVID-19 vaccine mandates. None of these cases have survived a motion to dismiss.”
Contact Ed Palattella at epalattella@usatodayco.com or 814-870-1813.
This article originally appeared on Erie Times-News: Erie Shriners prevails in case over workers’ refusal of COVID vaccine