COVID “Vaccination Shaming” Haunts New York Building

The owners of a Manhattan co-op have found themselves in the middle of the latest legal collateral effect of the covid pandemic—vaccination shaming.

In a series of Federal lawsuits, a building services employee has sued 61 West 9th Street Owners Corp., their managing agent Orsid Realty, as well as private labor organizations and members, for what is being described as “vaccination shaming.”

The lawsuit and its filing vividly show that the employee was terminated because of the building board’s “perceptions of non-vaccinated individuals,” a violation of Federal Law.

The lawsuits (23-cv-0727 Lagerstrom v. Orsid Realty, 61 West 9th, and 24-cv-05485 Lagerstrom v. Orsid Realty Advisory Board (R.A.B.) et al.) have become “a guidepost for vaccine discrimination cases,” said the plaintiff. Lagerstrom claims, with substantial proof throughout the complaint, that during the holidays in 2022, covid became a “mechanism to terminate people unlawfully,” and that the building owners designed a policy specifically for him and harassed and threatened him for not being vaccinated.

Lagerstrom claims, and his lawsuit indeed shows, that as wealthy building residents fled their apartments for their country homes, the board and owners began harassing him, obsessed with the idea that he be vaccinated. When he declined, they started to threaten him. “I recorded them doing this, and the threats—they actually implemented them.” The pro se plaintiff filed a Title VII lawsuit that the EEOC has called “a rare instance where an employer is captured on tape saying they know they are breaking the discrimination laws and know about retaliation, but are going to do it anyway.”

Lagerstrom’s lawsuit claims that the building owners demanded employee “vaccination passports” from their full-time employees before designing the policy intended only for him. They received all employee status cards, except for Lagerstrom’s, who claims he was the only non-vaccinated employee and the only employee who did not contract COVID.

“The proof is in the pudding,” said Lagerstrom. “It’s on a recorded phone call with the agent. She forced me to take weekly COVID tests before starting the workweek, and I was the only one required to wear masks and all this nonsense. They lost their minds. They didn’t ask contractors or office workers to get vaccinated. The bosses in corporate laughed when they told me they weren’t required to be vaccinated. They even asked me for phone numbers of my church members and wanted to verify if my religious beliefs were real, and they tried to force me to go to their doctors to get different opinions about the dangers of being vaccinated.”

Lagerstrom’s lawsuit is drawing attention from the “anti-jab” legal movement on multiple fronts, especially regarding The Civil Rights Act of 1964. “A unionized employee of 20 years cannot be terminated for not being vaccinated. The only thing mandatory about the vaccine exemptions is that if you meet certain criteria, your boss is mandated by Federal Law to grant you an exemption. Exemptions are not something you request; exemptions are a protected right.”

Lagerstrom’s assessment is correct. “Only a Federal public health official can force you to be vaccinated, and only after an individual examination and an assessment of the threat you pose to the public,” he said. “Not only did these people flout Federal Law, they are hypocrites. These are the same people who believe in ‘my body, my right’ on issues like abortion, but they believe those laws should only apply to them, and that I don’t have the right to decide what I want put in my body.”

Lagerstrom’s lawsuit seeks damages, including the loss of a full pension, healthcare, back and front pay, and more. Ironically, the lawsuit shows that during a recorded phone call, Lagerstrom’s highest-ranking superior, Robert Mellman of Orsid Realty, promised him he would never be terminated for not being vaccinated. Yet, when he was fired, they sent him a certified letter stating the cause of his termination was exactly that—his refusal to be vaccinated.

The recordings also reveal that Lagerstrom was told he need not formally seek exemptions, and that they would be given to him if he simply informed them, “not in voicemails or text messages,” that his doctor advised against receiving the vaccine. “This was after I sent them a religious exemption letter. They were infuriated by religion; they didn’t understand my religious beliefs and then began to focus on the medical stuff, and they still are today. It’s sick. Everything should have stopped when my pastor sent them a letter, but they just kept going. I guess it’s all fun and games until somebody gets hurt, right?”

“They told me I was stupid and insane for not being vaccinated. I watched these people sit in the building lobby—I even called an ambulance for one who thought she was having a heart attack from being jabbed—and they all got COVID afterward. Then they run their mouths about how they’re knowingly breaking the law on recorded phone calls, in 2022, and they call me stupid and insane? I worked over 20 years toward my pension, the best years of my life, and they stripped me of that, of my healthcare, of my reputation in the business. These are my rights, yours too. If you want to be vaccinated, you should have that right, but when the law allows that you do not have to be vaccinated, you have that right too.”

https://cases.justia.com/federal/district-courts/new-york/nysdce/1:2023cv00727/593117/74/0.pdf

https://www.pacermonitor.com/public/case/47609005/Lagerstrom_v_Orsid_Realty_et_al)