Religious employees in Arizona who suffer an injury due to being required to get the COVID-19 vaccine by their employer will have a remedy if a proposed bill makes it into law. State Rep. Quang Nguyen (R-Prescott), along with several co-sponsors, introduced HB 2043 that makes employers liable for a “significant injury” to an employee resulting from the vaccine if the employer denies them a religious exemption.
“This is one of the most important bills I’m introducing this coming session,” Nguyen said in a statement. “The reality is COVID-19 is going to be with us for a long time. Public and private health mandates are not a good solution and could instead cause harm in some cases. If businesses and employers are intent on mandating vaccinations as a condition of employment, they should be held accountable if their employees face serious harm or illness.”
The bill provides “actual damages, court costs and reasonable attorney fees or statutory damages of $500,000, whichever is greater.” Workers can also receive exemplary damages, and any damages are in addition to worker’s compensation.
Nguyen noted that current law only allows recovery through worker’s compensation, and that the government has already given the COVID-19 vaccine manufacturers liability protection, limiting who the injured can sue.
According to the CDC’s Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System (VAERS), there were over 21,000 vaccine deaths by the end of 2021 and over 110,000 hospitalizations. There were over a million negative reactions total. Of those, 1,947 were reports of myocarditis or pericarditis among people ages 30 years and younger. Other serious health problems reported to the CDC include anaphylaxis, thrombosis with thrombocytopenia syndrome, and Guillain-Barré Syndrome.
There are far more adverse events than are reported by VAERS. A report prepared by Harvard Pilgrim Healthcare submitted to the Department of Health and Human Services in 2010 concluded that “fewer than one percent of vaccine adverse events are reported” by the VAERS system.
A medical study of 972,723 people in Sweden found a wide variety of health problems caused by the COVID-19 vaccine, some more prevalent among certain age groups. Some of the adverse effects that affected older people the most were three types of strokes, pulmonary embolism, acute kidney injury, and acute liver failure. Younger people were more likely to get appendicitis, autoimmune thyroiditis, and Kawasaki’s syndrome.
Dr. Peter McCullough, a top cardiologist and leader in the medical response to the COVID-19 pandemic, said in a recent interview that myocarditis in young people post vaccine is far more dangerous than the COVID version of the heart disease. During another interview with Laura Ingraham on Fox News, he observed that “two studies out of the United Kingdom and one out of New York City show higher rates of vaccine-averse events when COVID-19 recovered patients are needlessly vaccinated.”
Arizona legislators are busy proposing new laws to deal with COVID-19 mandates and restrictions, and there are several ongoing lawsuits. A state law passed last year that banned COVID-19 vaccine mandates was struck down by a judge for technical reasons; it violated the Arizona Constitution’s single-subject rule for legislation. State Rep. Steve Kaiser (R-Phoenix) introduced a bill this year that would allow exemptions from vaccine mandates for those who have had COVID-19.
Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich sued the Biden administration multiple times over its COVID-19 vaccine mandates as well as the city of Phoenix’s mandate, which withdrew the mandate for now. Brnovich made national headlines when he responded to a reporter inquiring whether he was vaccinated, “Have you had an STD?”
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Rachel Alexander is a reporter at The Arizona Sun Times and The Star News Network. Follow Rachel on Twitter. Email tips to [email protected].
