COVID-19
Employer Vaccination Mandates Under Scrutiny Post COVID-19
From Heartland Daily News
By 
From presidential candidate Donald Trump’s promise to reinstate military members who were fired for not getting COVID-19 shots to a federal court decision favoring employee vaccination preferences, vaccine mandates at work appear to be coming to an end.
The Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago, Illinois ruled employees at Wisconsin health care system Aspirus, Inc. can go forward with their claim that they were unlawfully denied a religious exemption from having to accept a COVID-19 shot. Aspirus claimed the employees’ real reason for not wanting the shots was secular, not religious.
Public Employees Protected
In 2023, Texas updated Section 81B.003 of the state’s health and safety code prohibiting vaccination mandates for state and local government employees. Before the change, employees had to prove a health risk or religious convictions to be granted an exemption.
Texas has taken the lead in prohibiting government agencies from issuing mandates for people to get vaccinated. Similar laws have passed in Florida and 11 other states: Arizona, Arkansas, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Montana, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Tennessee, and Utah.
Private Employees’ Rights Unclear
Private employers are a different matter says Javier Perez, a board-certified labor and employment law attorney with Crain Brogdon LLP in Dallas
“Despite the new protective laws for [government] employees, unless there is a specific law prohibiting employer vaccine mandates, employers can still, generally speaking, impose workplace vaccine mandates so long as they do not discriminate,” said Perez, a board-certified labor and employment law attorney with Crain Brogdon LLP in Dallas. “The employer has wide discretion to decide what the rules of the road are in their workplace.”
The dynamics in the workplace have changed, says Perez.
“My sense of the job market is that employers can replace people who won’t comply,” said Perez. “But with a lot of jobs pivoting to remote work—more than we thought possible—it’s kind of an easy way, on a temporary basis, to work around those risks.”
Mandates ‘Have Backfired’
Despite the lack of clarity in employer-employee relations, the tide is turning against vaccine mandates and other COVID-related work rules, in particular failures to accommodate religious exemptions, says Douglas P. Seaton, J.D, Ph.D., president of Upper Midwest Law Center.
“These mandates, based on shoddy or no science, have backfired because they have resulted in serious levels of suspicion of the bona fides of all new government regulation, especially when ‘science’ is claimed to be the rationale,” said Seaton.
‘Simply Shut Up’
In 1905, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled Massachusetts could not pass a vaccination mandate to protect the individual but could do so “to protect the public from a dangerous communicable disease.”
Historically, the public health bureaucracy had been relatively circumspect in exercising that enormous power to control individual behavior, says Linda Gorman, director of the Independence Institute’s Health Care Policy Center. Things began to change in the 1990s when public health researchers and government health bureaucracies were captured by the notion that the British, Canadian, and European health care systems were better than the U.S. system because they were government-controlled.
“They apparently believed that health would improve, and costs would fall, if patients, doctors, and suppliers would simply shut up and do as they were told,” said Gorman.
‘Power Is Attractive’
The COVID-19 pandemic tested that power. Instead of systematically providing the best available information to individuals about the new COVID vaccine and allowing informed consent, the bureaucrats resorted to brute force to make people do as they were told, says Gorman.
“Power is attractive, and I see no sign that the health bureaucracy will give up its vast powers without a fight,” said Gorman. “The tragedy is the backfire has made people suspicious about all vaccine recommendations, and unknown numbers of people will die and suffer severe health consequences as a result.”
The COVID overreach made credentialed experts’ ethical failings evident, says Gorman.
“It is now obvious that government health bureaucracies see no harm in lying about efficacy, disease risk, and data quality in order to achieve their own end,” said Gorman.
“The first question is, ‘What do we do about it?’” said Gorman. “The second is, “Who should people trust for the accurate information they need to make informed decisions about their medical care?”
Kenneth Artz ([email protected]) writes from Tyler, Texas.
Chris Barber leaves the courthouse in Ottawa after the verdict was delivered in his trial with fellow Freedom Convoy organizer Tamara Lich, on Thursday, April 3, 2025. (Photo credit: THE CANADIAN PRESS/Justin Tang)
“Chris Barber consistently followed the legal advice that he received from police officers, lawyers, and a Superior Court judge.”
The Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms announces that Chris Barber has asked the Ontario Court of Justice for a stay of proceedings against him. He argues that the legal advice given to him by police officers, lawyers, and a Superior Court judge during the Freedom Convoy was erroneous and that, as a result, the Crown is not entitled to convict him.
On April 3, 2025, Justice Heather Perkins-McVey of the Ontario Court of Justice found Mr. Barber guilty of mischief and of counselling others to breach a court order. That decision followed upon a lengthy 45-day trial stretching from September 2023 to September 2024.
Diane Magas, Chris Barber’s lawyer, filed a Stay of Proceedings Application with the Court on April 16, 2025. In that Application, Mr. Barber and his legal team argue that he did, in fact, seek legal advice regarding his actions during the Freedom Convoy protest.
For example, he followed Ottawa Police Services directions on where to park trucks in downtown Ottawa. When an officer asked him to move his truck, “Big Red,” from downtown Ottawa, he moved it. On February 7 and 16, 2022, his lawyer at the time advised him that Justice Maclean of the Superior Court had confirmed that the protest could continue so long as it continued to be peaceful and safe.
In essence, Chris Barber and his legal team are now arguing that he followed all legal advice that was given to him in 2022, but that some of the legal advice he was given turned out to be erroneous.
His Application argues for a stay of proceedings against him on the grounds that “he sought advice from lawyers, police officers, and a Superior Court Judge on the legality of the protest he was involved in.”
This Application was filed one day after Chris Barber was informed that the Crown was pursuing a two-year prison sentence against him. In an April 15 Facebook post, Mr. Barber wrote, “My family got bad news today. The Crown prosecutor wants to lock Tamara Lich and me in prison for two years-for standing up for freedom. They also want to [seize] my truck, Big Red, and crush her like she’s just scrap metal or sell it at auction.”
If the Application is successful, Mr. Barber would not see prison time, nor would his truck be seized.
“Throughout the peaceful Freedom Convoy, Chris Barber did what any law-abiding Canadian would do: seeking out and acting upon the best legal advice available to him,” stated John Carpay, President of the Justice Centre. “Chris Barber consistently followed the legal advice that he received from police officers, lawyers, and a Superior Court judge.”
“To hold a well-meaning man behind bars for two years and to confiscate his property, as is now demanded by the Crown, would bring the administration of justice into disrepute,” Mr. Carpay continued. “Crown prosecutors are painting a portrait of a dangerous criminal, even while Chris Barber sought out and followed legal advice when participating in the Freedom Convoy in Ottawa in 2022. Chris worked within the law when peacefully exercising his Charter freedoms of expression, assembly and association.”
COVID-19
Tamara Lich and Chris Barber trial update: The Longest Mischief Trial of All Time continues..
Here are the last two posts on Tamara Lich’s Substack posted April 16 and April 17:
April 17:
We weren’t able to secure a date yesterday for the sentencing hearing and instead another ‘speak to’ was set for April 28. In addition to time needed to enter numerous impact statements (coincidentally and conveniently comprised of individuals suing us for $300,000,000.00), the Crown has added a forfeiture order to seize Big Red which will add significant time to argue. Therefore I suspect all parties will need to find 4-5 days in their schedules for the sentencing hearing.
The Crown is also seeking two years in federal prison for each of us.
Three days were tentatively set aside at the end of May for a Stay of Proceedings application put forth yesterday by Ms. Magus on Chris’ behalf.
And so The Longest Mischief Trial of All Time continues to plod along, still no end in sight.
April 16:
In our trial, the longest mischief trial of all time, we set hearing dates to set hearing dates.
There will be a ‘speak to’ this afternoon to set a date for the sentencing hearing which we think will take 3-4 days. Following that hearing, Chris and I will return to Ottawa again for the actual sentence.
The Crown is seeking 2 years in a federal penitentiary for both of us, plus they have decided to file an application to confiscate Big Red. Funny, there hasn’t been a single other convoy case in which the Crown demanded that persons property or vehicle, yet they seem to want Big Red. You need to ask yourself why.
Chris raised his children in that truck, changed their diapers in that truck, had his old dog, Buddy, put to sleep in the passenger seat when his time came because that was Buddy’s favourite place in the world.
This is not about the rule of law.
It’s about crushing a Canadian symbol of Hope, Pride & Unity
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