Jon Hyman Talks to Us About Vaccine Mandates

Host Emeritus Patrick Concilus returns as we have a great conversation with employment law attorney Jon Hyman  about vaccine mandates.

Find Jon online at:
https://www.ohioemployerlawblog.com
https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonathanhyman
https://twitter.com/jonhyman

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Transcript

Announcer 0:00

Had you actually read the email, you would know that the podcast you are about to listen to could contain explicit language and offensive content. These HR experts' views are not representative of their past, present, or future employers. If you've ever heard, my manager is unfair to me, I need you to reset my HR portal password, or can I ride up my employee for crying too much? Welcome to our little safe zone. Welcome to Jaded HR.

Patrick 0:44

Hello and welcome to another episode of Jaded HR, podcast by three human resource workers who just want to help you get through the workday by saying all those things you are thinking, but say them out loud. I'm Patrick Constillas. I'm Warren Workman. And I'm John Hyman.

Warren 1:01

Alrighty, we are very happy to have our guest John Hyman with us today. You may know him as the author of the Ohio Employer Law Blog. He's retitled recently, the past year and a half, the coronavirus law blog. And if you do not follow that blog already, please go online, follow it, follow him on LinkedIn as well because they post the stories there, very active on LinkedIn and other social media out there. So, John, why don't you just take a moment and give us a full rundown of yourself?

Jon 1:31

Yeah, I am a management side employment lawyer. I've been doing this for coming up on 25 years, representing almost exclusively employers on the management side and a variety of labor and employment-related disputes. I think of myself kind of in or I wear kind of two different hats in my law practice. So one hat I work as what I call an outside in-house counsel. So for those businesses that are too small for a general counsel or have maybe have a general counsel but don't have someone with labor and employment legal experience, I serve as the kind of voice on the other end of the phone when they have to hire someone, fire someone, draft that agreement or policy, do the internal investigation, have the leave of absence question, what have you. I'm kind of the legal the legal check, the legal voice or reason on the other end of the phone. And then for the businesses that don't think to call me ahead of time and find themselves with a process server at their door, I litigate as well. That's the other uh the other half of my practice, the other hat I wear is defending employers in a, you know, you're you you name it, I've defended it employment type lawsuit. So sexual harassment, FMLA, ADA, Title VII, wage hour, what have you. I've done it almost certainly more than you know more than once or twice in the two and a half decades I've been practicing.

Patrick 2:57

So for those employers that contact you ahead of time, would you say that you're kind of the vaccine to help them get through it a little bit easier?

Jon 3:05

Yes. I I I I can't guarantee I will keep them out of court, uh, just like we can't guarantee the vaccine will keep you out of the hospital. But it is it is the best the best prophylactic you can take.

Warren 3:16

Nice. Well, that's an awesome segue, Patrick. Uh I I I applaud you for that. Very, very well done because our topics today, our main topic for today is vaccination mandates at work. But before I did want to dive into that, I also wanted to start off by talking about your your list, your the worst employers award that you give out every year. So tell us a little bit about that, how it got started, and then uh maybe some of your favorite cases.

Jon 3:48

Yeah, it's hard to say favorite when you're talking about awful things that employers do. But I mean, I've I've been writing the blog for 14 years, almost 14 and a half years, Monday through Friday at uh Ohio Employer Lawblog.com. And what I've noticed, what I noticed over time was that a lot of the stories I was telling were like, this is an awful thing a company did, like, don't do this, and drawing a lesson from something really just awful that an employer did to one of its employees. And so I decided back in 2017 I was going to start compiling them into a list, call it the worst employer of the year award, and then um at the end of the year throw up a SurveyMonkey and have all of my readers vote, and then I would give out a mock, you know, like a mock trophy at the end of the year. Year to year, I mean there are you there are usually some pretty outstanding standouts that you could look at it and say, yeah, this is probably the one that's gonna win. So there was the there was the business owner that was unhappy with how a maintenance guy he hired was kind of cleaning his store uh after it closed for the night. So he hired a couple of thugs to to rough him up after the you know after we closed the store and they accidentally killed him. And so, yeah, that was that guy, you know, that guy went to prison. Um he won for worst employer. Yeah, when you kill the employee, that is. Yeah, when when you murder Yeah, when you when you murder when you murder an employee, yeah, it's it's the the award the award is yours to win. You know, there was the there was the one who kept a mentally disabled individual kind of chained up in the storeroom with just a bucket to go to the bathroom in and made him work. You know, a hundred plus hours. Yeah, made him work a hundred plus hours a week and would like beat him and torture him and what have you. And again, that's kind of like a no-brainer winner. My favorite so far this year, actually, there's there's gonna be a follow-up, a follow-up post. Uh, actually, by the time this goes live, it'll probably be already be up on the blog. But Blizzard Activision, the um video game developer, had one of their employees who at a game developer conference nicknamed his hotel room the Cosby Suite, named uh after Bill Cosby with a big picture of Bill hanging up over the bed. Because that's where he would take like the young female workers to groom them. You know, he'd ply them with alcohol with the uh presumably the hopes of having his way with them. That's I think a strong contender for 2021. Um and the update is and they're currently under investigation by the state of California for that and other things that lead to a really toxic worse workforce. But the latest allegation is that they've uh shredded a whole bunch of documents that the state of California asked for in its investigation, which is a a big, a big legal no-no. We don't we don't shred documents, particularly when you're being investigated by the government. And so that I I can almost guarantee that that case is not gonna end well for uh you know for for that company. And I think they're gonna be a strong, a strong contender as as we kind of wind down uh the end of 2021.

Warren 7:09

Well, talking about that, it was it was I read the article, it was the HR department that was shredding these documents, apparently.

Jon 7:17

That's what the allegation is, yeah.

Warren 7:18

How much are they paying you? Everybody's got a price somewhere, but to know what's going on in the HR department and go in there and let's let's destroy these files. What what is HR getting out of this? I think there's nothing good that's gonna come out of it. They I can see is there personal liability for that eight the the folks in that HR department for having done that, knowing they're under investigation?

Jon 7:42

I don't know in California if there is any state that's gonna have it, it's gonna be California. I just don't I just don't know the I just don't know the answer to that question. It is it is an interesting question when you look at at cases where like there was a a case here in in Ohio famously a number of years ago. It was the and it ultimately got tossed out on appeal, but it was the for some technical issues, but it was the largest, at the time it was the largest single plaintiff employment verdict in the history of Ohio. The plaintiff won a 47.5 million dollar jury verdict on an age discrimination and retaliation claim, and his claim was the the plaintiff's claim was that the company wanted him to fire a bunch of younger workers, he objected, and then ultimately was let go from his job. And they said he was let go for performance, but then all the performance reviews that they relied on, uh the evidence showed were all created after the fact and then backdated to make it make it look like they were done contemporaneously with the dis with the discipline. Again, it's like what you wanna like you're being told you gotta get rid of this guy, you want to support the decision, but like where does your own I mean A, what do you have to gain from it? And B, where does your own sense of ethics or morals come into play? And like it's is is your job worth sacrificing your you know what makes you feel good about you as a person and what you do for a living? And you know, when someone asks me to shred documents or backdate something, I mean that's where I am very quickly getting my resume together and looking for a new job because that's just not it's it's it shouldn't it shouldn't be what the it shouldn't be what people get into HR to do.

Patrick 9:25

No, but it pretty much sums up how all of Reddit feels about HR because you know, according to Reddit, all of HR are these evil minions who only care about themselves and their employer and you know have nothing to do with the little guy, which in a sense you can see where you can make that argument, but but then it's stories like this that are what make HR look the way they do.

Jon 9:47

Yeah, it kind of it does create that us against them mentality when really, I mean what any employer wants, and I I include the HR department in that, is I mean, you want employees to succeed because successful employees lead to successful companies. You don't you don't want employees to fail, because when your employees fail, then uh they're not doing their job, you're not they're not doing what you need them to do to make your company successful, and ultimately you then have to they're either gonna quit, you're gonna fire them, and then you have to source candidates, recruit, hire, train, and and go through that whole so it it no company wants an employee to fail. And it's this whole us against them mindset that just it always baffles me because it's it's the uh in organizations that are successful, it's I mean it's it's the opposite that's true.

Warren 10:36

Oh, absolutely. I just am astounded as I read the the your uh blogs about things that are going on, other uh employment law blogs I follow. I'm just dumbfounded. I'm like, really? Who who thought that that was a good idea? Why did you think that you would do this?

Jon 10:55

I I say often that I put a roof over my kids' head and feed them and pay their school tuition based on the stupidity of the American worker in corporate America. It's just it's just the truth.

Warren 11:07

It is.

Jon 11:08

You know, people do dumb things. If they didn't, um I'd be out of work. So, or I'd be, you know, writing wills or no no no no disparagement to the fine probate department of my firm, but I I much prefer to practice employment law.

Patrick 11:22

Absolutely. I mean, that's our fuel here, too. There's a reason for data HR and stupid people is pretty much the number one on that list.

Warren 11:31

Absolutely. Well, let's get into the meat of our topic today: vaccinations at work. So here we are, the last day of August 2021, and it's just everything's happening so rapid fire right now. Laws, I read online that New York State is going to be the ABA in New York is going to be petitioning for all employers to require vaccinations. Uh, we've seen some cases, the Houston uh hospital case of nurses, nurses getting ultimately getting fired for not getting vaccinated. Delta Airlines is going to be charging 200 extra dollars onto their employees who aren't vaccinated, their health premiums. There's just so much going on in the vaccination world. But what what is it that the vaccination has become political? It's and it's the opposite of what it would be, you know, 10 years ago when you'd hear somebody who refuses to get a vaccination, you're thinking, oh, this is some left-wing type person that's uh naturalist and doesn't want to do that potentially. And now it's the exact opposite. Oh, it's the far right wing, and it's just either way, they're both wrong. But the thing is, why science can't be political, vaccinations can't be political. It's just it blows my mind to think what's going on. And now the military's said that people are going to have to be vaccinated. I know there's a lot of folks in the military who've been anti-VEX.

Patrick 12:56

Really, nothing different. Like those are required from what I've read most of the time, anyway. This is a pretty standard operating procedure for them.

Jon 13:03

Yeah. I I think you're you're right, it has become highly politicized. I I think when the history of the early part of the 21st century is written, I think a lot of the what's wrong with our society is going to fall at the feet of social media. And not necessarily the social media companies. I'm not here to say that they're I mean, they they create a platform and then people use that platform as they want to use it. Uh but because of the prevalence of social media and the internet in general in our lives, you know, you can with the click of a button you can find anything to support whatever theory you hold in your brain. And so if you believe that the global elites are have put 5G transmitters in the COVID vaccine because the government wants to, you know, Bill Gates and his cabal want to track you, A, you you need psychiatric help.

Patrick 14:04

But B spoiler alert, you're not that important.

Jon 14:10

Uh spoiler alert, I mean, you know, everybody's tracking us already anyway. I mean, we carry iPhones and Androids around with us all the time, and and everybody knows where we are at all times anyway, and and and we're not that important. And if the government really wants to know, you know, at what time of the morning I go, you know, I go to the bathroom, I mean more power to them. I'm happy to have whatever. But um, but the point is that if people want to find out, if people want to find a source to support that belief, they're gonna find. And so we live in this, in this, people live in these vacuums or silos where they just get these these kind of infinite feedback loops of information that just reinforce these crazy ideas that people have, which is which I think is largely where we are. And look, there are there are legitimate reasons why people are skeptical about taking a vaccine, particularly one when it was only on an emergency use authorization. So I I understand the the healthy skepticism people had. I I understand the the wait and see attitude. I mean, I also know because I've done the research and actually know someone who helped develop the mRNA technology both for Moderna and Pfizer, and I've spoken to him about it. I know that these are extraordinarily safe vaccines that have been studied and tested for decades. This happens to be the first time they've been kind of implemented out in the real world, but they're safe and they're effective, and they're the best thing we have that's gonna get us through to the other side, or it was before enough people didn't take it, and then this thing mutated to a delta variant, and that is now proving to be a little more vaccine resistant than than we had hoped. And and my fear is that it's then gonna mutate to uh um I think we're already up to lambda or whatever, but whatever's I don't know my Greek alphabet that well, but whatever comes after Lambda or whatever.

Patrick 16:04

We're all gonna know the Greek alphabet when this is over.

Jon 16:07

I mean, we're gonna get we're gonna get to like the omega variant, right? I think that's the last letter. Yeah, we're gonna get to the omega variant. We're all gonna be, I mean, is that the I mean when when does like when does the zombie variant come out, right? But we're we're we're gonna get to a variant that is that that the vaccines won't be able to keep up with. And and so the the best way to stop that from happening is to get enough people vaccinated. And we're just three months ago, if we would have had this discussion, two months ago if we would have had this discussion, I would have told you that the decision whether to get vaccinated is a personal medical decision between an individual and their healthcare provider, and it's not an employer's business. And employers shouldn't be mandating, they should be educating and encouraging, but they shouldn't be putting mandates in place. And then this new wave of the of the pandemic started a month or a month and a half ago, and you know, here we are back up to close to 200,000 cases a day with ICUs full again, and it feels like we're living in quicksand and nothing has changed from where we were, you know, last summer and winter. And I think the best way to get enough people vaccinated is for employers to mandate. And it stinks that we've gotten to that point. I think it's it's it it does feel invasive to me and it does feel a little big brothery to me, my own personal sense of of kind of privacy. But on the kind of macro societal level, it's what needs to be done in order to get us through this pandemic as quickly as possible with the least amount of with the least amount of human sacrifice. And the fact that it it makes me sad that we've gotten to the point where we have to be talking about people mandating things like a vaccine, that there weren't enough of us willing to step up, do the right thing, even if maybe you had concerns or weren't a hundred percent convinced that it was the right thing to do, that people weren't uh people were selfish and not selfless. That I was having a conversation with someone today at work who said that, you know, if the greatest generation was alive today, they would just be shaking they would just be shaking their heads because they they they split like a lentil bean among five people for you know a week's worth of food during the Great Depression, and they rationed during World War II, you know, and all these sacrifices that people made. And we're we're at a we're we're at war against this virus, and people aren't willing to make the sacrifices necessary to to beat this thing. People aren't willing to people are losing their minds still after 18 months over putting a freaking mask on their face.

Patrick 18:44

They literally asked us to stay at home and play video games and to get two shots. Yeah. The only sacrifice we had to make.

Jon 18:50

Yeah. Yeah.

Warren 18:51

Yeah.

Jon 18:51

It's to cart your groceries. Have someone bring your groceries to your door instead of going to the grocery store. And get a couple of shots and uh put a, you know, put a piece of put a piece of cloth over your face. And people have people have lost their damn minds, and it just and it just blows me. It just blows me away.

Warren 19:09

Uh and I don't understand what just the humanity. If someone I don't have to at first, you know, if if you listen to some of Patrick and my first episodes, we started this, we planned this before the pandemic, but we launched right as the pandemic was starting. But we we're talking, oh, you know, I I I was joking around with my boss. Hey, I'd rather just get it right now, get it done over with feel like crap for two weeks, and get back to it. But now my my feeling has changed a hundred percent. I carry my mask in my pocket everywhere I go, all the time. I have multiple masks, you know, it's just so I have one extra one in my car in case I just happen to forget it or anything. It's it's not asking the end of the world for someone, regardless of your vaccination says, just to put on a mask. It's not violating any any rights of yours or anything like that.

Jon 19:54

It's it's you know, I know, and people are you know, and people are so quick to, you know, so I was in Whole Foods maybe six months ago, and the woman in front of me was not was not wearing a mask, and the woman at the fish counter where I was said to her, you know, I'm sorry, but we have a mask, we have a mask policy, you have to put a mask on. Please put your mask on. And she went off about I'm Jewish, I don't need to wear a mask, you're no better than the Nazis back in World War II. I can't believe you're doing this to me. You know, you're so you're a Nazi and whatever. And and anybody who thinks either getting a life-saving vaccine or having to wear a piece of cloth over their face is uh akin to being treated like the Jews in Nazi Germany needs to go back to Nazi Germany in the 1930s with a gold star on their coat and then tell me if you feel the same way. Because it is, it is there is nothing it's it's it's offentive to suggest that that they are anything even in the same universe.

Warren 20:57

And that case in Houston with the they were trying to actually say it was a violation of the Nuremberg agreement that not to do human trials on people, so that's why they didn't want to wear a mask as well. I'm like, yeah, we're not apples to apples, we're not apples to Buicks. It's not a there's no common ground in between.

Patrick 21:18

That Nuremberg thing keeps popping up. A lot of with the nursing community that's really big for whatever reason.

Jon 21:25

They're they're all convinced that so right, so the Nuremberg, the Nuremberg code for your listeners, if they're not familiar, was uh agreed upon, it's an agreed upon set of medical ethics that came into place after World War II in response to the medical experiment the medical experimentations that Joseph Mengele and his team of Nazi doctors were doing on Jews in the concentration camps to say that like you can't force someone to go through a medical experiment. It has to be done with informed consent to boil it down into a into a neat little sentence. And they're saying, Well, you're forcing me to take the vaccine there, and it's and at the time. It was on its emergency use authorization, and therefore, you know, it's a met you're you're forcing me to go undergo a medical experiment, which is nobody is strapping anybody down to a gurney and shoving a needle in their arm. If your employer mandates and you don't want to get the shot, then you go find another job. That's your remedy.

Warren 22:22

Exactly. Well, let's talk about those people that are going to try and cheat the system one way or another. There's so many things out there about fake uh COVID vaccination cards out there. And I'll go ahead and let's go ahead and dive right into it. With on August 10th, you put a post out on about religious accommodations. And we've been, and then you followed that up. I think it was just last week, about the the person who, and this is here, I'll I'll go back, step back a bit. So religious accommodations are something that just blow my mind, especially and use the ex uh example I'd been thinking of for a long time. Somebody's a devout Catholic, and they you they make their religious beliefs very well known, and but they want to claim religious exemption from the vaccine. How can they do that? The Pope has been very much on board with the vaccination process. The Catholic Church as a whole, there's been a few noteworthy cases of people who haven't, but you know, what once the the leader of your organization says, hey, go get your shot. It's your moral, I think his line was your moral responsibility to get your shot. At that point, why doesn't that just blow a hole completely through uh in just using the Catholic religion in this case, but there's other equivalents out there, I'm sure, that you can say you want a religious exemption. Where is that line at?

Jon 23:48

Uh it's a really fuzzy line, and it's a lot further along than a uh religious the the religious teachings or tenets of a recon of an organized religion. I mean, there there's only two organized religions that are that have kind of anti-vax philosophies baked into their religion Christian scientists and the Dutch Reformed Church. And Christian scientists and Dutch reformists total 300,000 people followers in the United States. Really, really small number. The Catholic Church has been, I mean, Pope Francis has been way out in front um almost from the beginning, saying, you know, get your shot. Most recently he put out like a the Vatican put out a public service announcement saying calling it like a like a moral, like your moral duty to get your vaccine. However, under Title VII, religion is defined more broadly than like the recognized principles or teachings of a religion. If someone holds a belief with the sincerity of a religious belief, that qualifies as a religious belief protected by Title VII. So if you are Catholic and you say, look, I believe that it is against my religion against my religion as I read the Bible and interpret my Christianity, it's against my religion to be vaccinated, that's probably enough under Title VII to trigger an employer's reasonable accommodation obligation. But I think the the biggest misunderstanding isn't really what is or what does or doesn't qualify as a religion. It's the people who say, Well, I have this letter from my preacher that says so-and-so's you know religion exempts them from getting a vaccine, which is fine. But that doesn't mean you get to come to work unvaccinated. It just means that an employer has to reasonably accommodate you. And, you know, that reasonable accommodation can take a lot of forms. They could choose to let you come to work unvaccinated, but if they're gone so far as to put a vaccine mandate in place, the odds of them doing that are probably pretty slim. They can, you know, if your job would accommodate remote work, they can have you work remotely. They could put you on like a barren third shift instead of having you out in the general population, you know, mingling with your coworkers. They can put you on an unpaid leave of absence, as that is a recognized, reasonable accommodation. And, you know, if you want to find out just how sincere someone's religious beliefs are, tell them they're not going to get paid until the pandemic is over. Um, and then we'll see, we'll see just how sincere their religious beliefs really are. But uh, you know, I I I want to individuals need to be dissuaded, and these organizations that are out there kind of selling vaccine accommodation letters uh there are some yours for just fifty dollars. Yeah, for the low low price price. Reasonably priced. For the low, low price of $39.99. I'll sell you this letter that you will exempt you from your employer's vaccine mandate. That's fine, but the people need to be dissuaded of the notion that that just allows you to walk in to your workplace, mask off, no vaccine, spreading your potential COVID germs all over the place because it it doesn't. All it does is trigger an employer's obligation to engage you in the interactive process to determine what accommodation, if any, it can offer you to allow you to keep working. And that accommodation very well could be we'll hold your job for you for a reasonable period of time, but we're not gonna pay you. Don't come, don't come into work, don't do it, don't do anything for us.

Patrick 27:14

Nice. I like that. Hey Warren, I have my um I was gonna try to find a way to send pictures, but I have my uh religious vaccine card. Did I show you guys that? No, you have Let me see if I can um you can you can read this. Uh is it backwards? No, I can't quite read it.

Warren 27:30

No, it's not backwards. I can't read the text other than the headline.

Patrick 27:33

It's uh it says vaccinated by the Lord, protected by the antibody of Jesus Christ our Lord, Jesus came inside me.

Warren 27:42

Oh Lord.

Jon 27:48

Um, but no, but but there there is a woman out there on the internet who is selling these these accommodation letters, and she's telling people that when an employer asks you if you've been vaccinated or have immunity against COVID, your response should be, you know, I have the natural yes, yes, I'm immune. I have the natural immunity that God gave me, which is just like it's just BS. It's just, I mean, that's if if you don't want to get the vaccine, that's fine. Again, like I said before, no one's gonna strap you down, but you you also don't have any right to a job, right? You're your your rights, you know, your your rights end when they have when they have the potential to make me sick.

Warren 28:31

Absolutely. I I couldn't agree with that more. And people are continuing to do really stupid things around this vaccination. We I don't know if we were online or I think we're all fine talking about the vaccination cards. Uh uh Immigration Control seized a truckload of them out at coming out of Memphis, Tennessee. And people were paying upwards of $2,000 for these cards, fake cards online. I was reading. And I'm like, first, these are little cardboard stock cards if you don't have one. You could buy, you know, a pack, a ream of 500 sheets of it for probably 30 bucks, make your own much better for 10, 15 cents a pop versus that much amount of money. But uh what I would personally like to see, and I want to get your thoughts on, are a vaccine passport like the European Union has and and things like that. Now, I was reading that currently Hawaii, California, and New York have sort of their own localized vaccine car or passports. But if I'm in here in North Carolina and I want to go to New York and I want to go see a Broadway show, I need my passport. And it needs to be across state, it has to be done by the federal government because we can move across state lines here in the United States.

Jon 29:43

I I agree with you 100%. I think that's what's, you know, as we are seeing now venues that are putting their own vaccine requirements in place. Like here in Northeast Ohio where I live, we had 12 independent music venues come out and say, as of I think it's next Friday, September 9th, whatever next Friday is, vaccine are going to be man uh vaccination status is going to be checked at the door and be required as a condition of entry or negative or a negative COVID test as a condition of entry. But you're right, those cards are easily forged, which is stupid because it's a federal felony that could put you in a federal prison for a number of years if you're caught. So, I mean, how badly do you want to go into that venue? Is it worth going to prison potentially? But because they're so easily because they're so easily faked, I agree with you that we need a federal digital solution. There are you're right that some states have implemented their own, nothing on the national level. Private the private sector has stepped up. Company Clear has created their own kind of digital vaccine passport where you can they'll let they will let you log in and connect with your healthcare provider that will then pull your vaccine record over and then give you like a QR code that can be scanned or a digital copy of your vaccine record. I've been testing it out for no other reason than I'm curious. I was curious how it worked. I haven't needed to use it anywhere yet, but it seems to work really, really well. Um so that's a potential solution. But unless and until we have you know a national standard like they have in the EU, which I because I I think it would probably lead to revolution, we're probably not gonna get one. It's uh but it it really it puts us in a difficult place in terms of you know having confidence that the people we're around in public are they're accurately representing their vaccination status.

Warren 31:41

Well, you mentioned the concert venues near where you are, requiring either a card or negative test. This past Saturday I went to the very first concert I've been to, believe it or not, in over seven years. But a bunch of my fraternity brothers and I, we decided we're gonna go see Dave Matthews, and I had a sense of security because they announced you must present your vaccination card or you must uh pres have a negative test within the last 48 hours. I went there, I whip out my card. She didn't look at it. Nobody looked at it. I could have had your vaccine card for all it was worth. I could have had uh you know a baseball, gray-looking baseball card for all they were looking at it. And it it I went from feeling, you know, going in there think, okay, I'm gonna feel pretty confident in this public gathering to oh my gosh, there's they're pencil whipping this essentially.

Jon 32:29

Um funnel 20,000 people into a venue to start a show, right? And so not yeah, so it does it does raise questions about closeness with which people are going to be actually looking at these things when you're when you're walking in.

Warren 32:43

So bringing things sort of pu full circle right now, I would say all but one of your worst employers this uh so far, 2021, have been COVID-related. Your nominees thus far have been COVID related. Where where do you see things going with employers? And do you think there's still going to be has it all been settled with that uh that employers can mandate vaccinations? I mean, it seems it's settled, but I can only see that there's gonna be umpteen billion lawsuits and and things like that and about where things are going with people and I want to get vaccinated, I'm not gonna get vaccinated, etc.

Jon 33:22

Uh there will be lawsuits. I think it's very well settled. I think it's been settled since the early 20th century, which was the last time the Supreme Court looked at a vaccine issue. It's been very well settled. I don't even with the current court that we have, I don't think it's going to change. We saw the Supreme Court very quickly dismiss a lawsuit that some students from the Indiana University tried to bring against that university's vaccine mandate as they were getting ready to go back to school. They lost at the trial court, lost at the Court of Appeals, and the Supreme Court with barely a word dismissed their case. And so I don't think there's I don't think there's an appetite at the Supreme Court in the middle of a pandemic to say that biz private businesses or even in the Indiana case, a state actor can't mandate in the name of public safety. But there will be lawsuits filed. Any of your listeners, when you're sued, call me. I would love to be the lawyer that takes on I no, seriously, I would love to be the lawyer that takes on people trying to overturn a vaccine mandate. There are, I mean, there are groups on the other side. There's groups of physicians, there's groups of lawyers, there's groups of politicians. These will be well-funded and coordinated efforts on the other side to try and get these vaccine mandates thrown out. They will not be um, it will not be your crazy pro se guy with the tinfoil hat representing himself. Um these will be these will be well-funded and coordinated efforts that are that are being backed by right-wing lobbying groups, and they need and they need to be taken seriously. And I look I and I would I would love to be the lawyer to take on that fight. So in all seriousness, if and when one of your listeners is sued, um, you know how to get a hold of me. I would I would love to take on that challenge. But I I but I but I do think the law is really clear on the issue, um, but it doesn't mean people aren't going to try because there is I mean, pick your poll, anywhere between 30 to 40 to maybe as high as 45% of the country doesn't even believe the last election was valid. And so they don't believe the last election was valid. They don't believe that the FDA and the CDC are being honest with them in terms of the vaccines. They don't believe that masks work, they don't believe that, you know, the a whole bunch of stuff they don't believe. And so I think these fights are gonna go on for a while. I think COVID's gonna be with us for a while. I don't think it's I think our chance to to beat this thing quickly, I think, disappeared sometime, uh probably this spring. And I think we're gonna be living living with COVID for a long time and need to learn how to live with it responsibly. Um which I mean you said you bring your mask with you, I bring my mask with me too. I think that's just gonna be a f a a a fixture of our reality for a long time coming, for better or for worse. I think it started as a pandemic, it's gonna become endemic, meaning it's just a virus that's gonna be here with us year after year, like the flu. Hopefully, science will give us boosters that are reliable and keep up with this thing, and it doesn't mutate to the point where the where the shots no longer help us.

Warren 36:24

Right. Right. There's there's so much about it. It's just it it's both a fascinating and scary time right now with everything that's going on. And I I just wow. It's everything's wow now.

Jon 36:38

It's been the most interesting 18 months of my career trying to help businesses navigate these issues as I've been, you know, equal parts, anxious and scared, and you know, everything that else, everything else that goes along with you know what it's just been like to live through the last 18 months, but then layer on top of that, just crazy busy helping businesses with these issues and just reading, writing, kind of partly making it up as we go along, but just a fascinating time to be an HR practitioner or uh a lawyer that helps businesses on the management side.

Warren 37:12

And just because we have the pandemic, these discrimination cases, these EEO suits, these things, they are not going away. And sometimes it looks like they're they're getting worse with with people. I'm just things I'm reading that non-pandemic related, the way people are behaving, it's just wow. Wow.

Jon 37:31

Yeah, yeah. Um yeah. Love that love thy neighbor seems to have uh been forgotten, which is which is real, which no, it's it's it's unfortunate. We've we've you know, we're much I think the maybe I'll I'll leave you guys with this, but I think the the un my takeaway from COVID as I look back over the last 18 months is just how selfish and self-centered people are, and that carries over not just in the COVID world, but I think you're right, in just the general kind of how we interact on a day-to-day basis. We are incredibly selfish, incredibly self-centered. We care way more about ourselves than our friends and neighbors and coworkers, and I think the scars that are gonna be left by this are gonna are gonna take a long, long time to fade.

Warren 38:16

Absolutely. Absolutely. Well, I you know, we've already gone well over half an hour right now, and I want to keep at that line. But this has just been fascinating. This has been really interesting. Uh, you know, I want to definitely keep tabs with you, have maybe a non-COVID discussion uh about things about employment law. Uh I just find it so so uh I find it also fascinating. Thank you for very, very much for joining us, and we we hope we can have you back again. Any final words uh where people can find you online to to connect with you?

Jon 38:49

Yeah, um I'll give uh I'll give three URLs. They can find me at uh Ohio Employer Lawblog.com. They can find me at coronaviruslaw.blog. They both go to the same place. My blog, my law firm, WickensHurzerPanza, uh, which is in Avon, Ohio, WickinsLaw.com. And then, I mean, I don't hide online. You can find me on Twitter at John Hyman, J-O-N, H Y-M-A-N, um, on LinkedIn at Jonathan Hyman, because uh some other guy took John Hyman before I could on LinkedIn. Um but no, I I I don't hide. Um you can literally just Google John Hyman Employment Lawyer and you'll find all this stuff too, pretty prominently in Google. So I'm happy to connect with any or any and all of your listeners um to talk about this stuff online, offline, or anywhere else.

Warren 39:37

Okay, great. Well, thank you. Thank you very much. Uh well that will wrap up our show for today. We want to thank the underscore orchestra for the use of the theme song Devil with the Devil, and thank you for to the great voice artist Andrew Kolpa for our disclaimer. Today's best practice, please get your shot and subscribe to John's blog. As always, I'm Warren, I'm Patrick, and I'm John Hyde. And we're helping you survive HR one what the fuck moment at a time. Get your shots. Please,