COVID Vaccine Aviation Cases Continue to Lose

One of the major disappointments among the many arising out of the COVID vaccine mandates was the almost complete failure of the US legal system to adequately respond to this unprecedented breach of employment law. There were a couple of big wins- Biden was unable to force virtually the entire US workforce into getting a shot with an unlicensed vaccine against its will, for example- but for the most part employer vaccine mandates have been approved by state and federal courts. This notwithstanding the fact that almost every one of the mandates, and the questions being asked leading up to the mandates, were a clear violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act ("ADA") and Title VII in cases where religious exemptions were in play. 

Examples include cases involving pilots for United Airlines (the only airline that actually terminated employees for refusing to get vaccinated) and Kalitta Air, a cargo carrier. In both cases, pilots who refused the vaccine on religious grounds had their claims disposed of on procedural grounds before any meaningful litigation could take place. 

The story of COVID vaccine employer mandates is one that needs to be explored in much greater detail. Here's my summarized take: The US set up a legal regime under the ADA specifically designed to prevent precisely what happened with the COVID vaccine mandates, namely, a presumption by employers that their employees were disabled because they were contagious, accompanied by unauthorized inquiries into the vaccination status of the workforce. Because no judge wanted to be the one who authorized a shutdown of vaccine mandates in the face of a supposedly terrifying epidemic, these legal issues went basically unexamined. The irony, of course, is that as we learn more about the nature of the disease and the vaccine development itself, there is less reason to support these mandates. I'll hope at some point this story gets the coverage it deserves.