Employees fired or placed on leave for violating COVID-19 vaccination mandates are suing the Regional Municipality of York and its police force, among others, in a provincewide $126-million class action lawsuit.
York Regional Police and several departments at the region have been named in a statement of claim filed against municipalities across the province. The lawsuit seeks damages for individuals who faced disciplinary action or lost their jobs for not following COVID-19 vaccination mandates.
“The action taken by the defendants, namely the sending home on unpaid leave and/or firing of the plaintiffs, for declining COVID-19 vaccines, were and continue to be unconstitutional,” the statement, filed by Rocco Galati Law Firm, argues.
The claim proposes individual plaintiffs receive approximately $550,000 for various damages. In total, 16 York Region staff and eight York Regional Police force members are named as plaintiffs, seeking a total of $13.2 million from the region and police. York Region had fired about 78 employees over its vaccination mandate, but has indicated that many stand to be rehired with the mandate now lifted.
York Region did not immediately respond to a request for comment from NewmarketToday.
York Region and the Town of Newmarket instituted COVID-19 vaccine mandates in 2021, stating they were necessary to protect workplaces amidst the pandemic. Although York Regional Police did not have a vaccination mandate, it required for a time that unvaccinated police officers have regular testing, something also raised as an issue in the statement of claim.
York Region lifted its vaccination mandate March 1 after repeated legal battles with its unions.
The filing argues the mandates infringed on Charter of Right and Freedom rights. It also argues that PCR tests can create false positives, that vaccination passports instituted by the province are also against charter rights, and that there is “no rational connection between being vaccinated or not in terms of avoiding or preventing transmission of the COVID virus.”
York Region Public Health and other public health officials have said that vaccination reduces your risk of catching and transmitting COVID-19, even if vaccinated individuals can still get and transmit the virus.
Rocco Galati Law Firm launched a similar lawsuit against federal agencies, which was recently thrown out, with the judge calling the claims “bad beyond argument.”
A group of York Region employees calling themselves Stand Up For York Region, who have protested the region’s vaccination mandates, said the region should apologize after it lifted its mandate March 1.
“Admitting fault is difficult. Reckoning is happening. Apologies are never too late. We understand that it is not comfortable or easy to speak against the narrative,” the group said in a mass email.
Today, the Town of Newmarket suspended its vaccination mandate, which had applied to all town staff, volunteers, council and committee members, and contractors. While Newmarket is not one of the municipalities named in the lawsuit, the town had fired three employees under its vaccination mandate.
NewmarketToday will update this story as more information is made available.
-with files from Richard Vivian, Guelp Today
