A judge has denied a collective request from more than 100 Los Alamos National Lab employees on Saturday to block the lab's vaccination mandate.
LANL's vaccine mandate requires that all staff and employees must have received the COVID-19 vaccine by Oct. 15 or risk losing their jobs, according to KRQE. Employees that were granted religious exemptions were required to go on vacation or unpaid leave until pandemic conditions improve.
“To me, it’s perfectly clear that employment is a benefit that the government is giving these people at LANL and they’re taking it away because they’re exercising their constitutional right to decide what goes in their body,” Jonathan Diener, an attorney representing some of the plaintiffs, told the station. “That was not a real accommodation, and I’m shocked that the judge accepted that as a legitimate accommodation for those people."
Of the LANL employees, 114 plaintiffs took part in filing the lawsuit, claiming that the mandate is violation of their constitutional rights, and in doing so, management had created a hostile work environment due to the mandate and any refusal to follow it, according to KRQE.
As of Saturday, Oct. 16, 96% of employees at LANL had received their COVID-19 vaccination.