The FDA has officially approved the Pfizer Covid vaccine last week for use on humans ages 15 and older months after it’s been in circulation. News that the Food and Drug Administration approved one of the three available has jumpstarted a huge push from Democrats to have it federally mandated but not everyone is on board with being forced to vaccinate.
Ahead of what they expect will be required, cities and businesses have started to mandate the vaccine themselves and hit some major pushback from employees, according to The Gainsville Sun. Florida first responders in one city united together to fight the hasty mandate:
[Florida] A lawsuit on behalf of more than 200 employees including police and firefighters was filed against the city of Gainesville, contending that the vaccination mandate is a violation of their rights of due process and equal protection.
In a preamble to the heart of the suit, attorney Jeff Childers said city officials once called the people filing the suit “heroes” for their work during the pandemic. A number of employees caught COVID-19, the suit states.
“They are now goats; scapegoats of failed City policy, scapegoats for failed political leaders and federal policies,” Childers wrote. “In its mad rush to solve an intractable problem not of the Plaintiffs’ making, the City has conceived an odious scheme to coerce the Plaintiffs into taking unwanted and unnecessary Covid vaccines by threatening their livelihoods, pensions, and dreams.”
They’re not alone. Similar lawsuits have sprung up all over the US but they have a huge fight on their hands.
In Cincinnati, battle-weary hospital workers filed a lawsuit, labeling the requirement “an affront to human dignity and personal freedom” and said the hospitals “are causing health care workers to leave the field.”
Quoting from lawsuits filed by Eric Deters & Associates on behalf of 27 plaintiffs: “When there was no vaccine, the workers had to go to work. They were heroes. Now that there is a vaccine, they have to get the vaccine or be fired. Now they are ‘zeros.’”
Because Democrats have not been able to mandate the vaccine, yet, Biden used his position to push businesses and lawmakers to do it for him:
“I’m calling on more companies in the private sector to step up with vaccine requirements that will reach millions more people,” Biden said in remarks at the White House. “If you’re a business leader, a nonprofit leader, a state or local leader, who has been waiting for full FDA approval to require vaccinations, I call on you now to do that — require it.”