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More than 150 Houston hospital workers were fired or quit after refusing COVID-19 vaccine

At least 153 employees of a Houston hospital — including doctors and nurses — were fired or resigned Tuesday after refusing to get vaccinated against COVID-19, one of the first mass terminations since vaccinations started in the U.S. this year, reinvigorating a national anti-vaccine movement.

In April, Houston Methodist Hospital began requiring vaccination for its more than 25,000 employees across Texas, claiming to be the first hospital in the nation with a COVID-19 vaccine mandate. Those who did not provide proof of vaccination by June 7 — or who had not applied for an exemption based on “medical condition (including pregnancy deferment) or sincerely held religious belief” — faced suspension without pay for two weeks. The hospital fired two managers for refusing the vaccine in April and suspended 178 more staff members June 7.

The employees were given until midnight Tuesday to get vaccinated, and “very few” resigned or retired early to avoid vaccination, said Gale Smith, a hospital spokeswoman.

“Employees who did not meet the deadline were terminated effective today,” Smith said in a statement Tuesday. “The employees who became compliant during the suspension period returned to work the day after they became compliant.”

Smith said hospital leaders had no regrets about the policy, despite the national attention it drew.

“Patients are always first and that’s what it’s always been,” she said.

Last month, nurse Jennifer Bridges and 116 other suspended employees sued the hospital in federal court, alleging that COVID-19 vaccines — which are approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for emergency use — were still experimental. The suit argued that mandating the vaccines violated the Nuremberg Code, ethical rules created after World War II to bar the type of gruesome human experiments conducted by the Nazis.

Dr. Marc Boom, Methodist’s CEO, said that as the first hospital to require the COVID-19 vaccine, they expected some backlash.

“Criticism is sometimes the price we pay for leading medicine,” Boom said in a statement after the lawsuit.

Of the hospital’s staff, 285 were granted medical or religious exemptions from the vaccine and 332 were allowed to defer it, Boom said, but most of the rest got vaccinated by the hospital’s deadline.

“Our employees and physicians made their decisions for our patients, who are always at the center of everything we do. They have fulfilled their sacred obligation as healthcare workers,” he said in a statement.

A Texas federal judge dismissed the employees’ case against the hospital earlier this month, rejecting their argument that the hospital was forcing them to take an experimental vaccine.

“This is not coercion. Methodist is trying to do their business of saving lives without giving them the COVID-19 virus,” U.S. District Judge Lynn Hughes wrote in the ruling. “It is a choice made to keep staff, patients and their families safer.”

Theodore Roosevelt statue at museum to be relocated

A prominent statue of Theodore Roosevelt at the entrance of The American Museum of Natural History will be removed after years of criticism that it symbolizes colonial subjugation and racial discrimination.

The New York City Public Design Commission voted unanimously Monday to relocate the statue, which depicts the former president on horseback with a Native American man and an African man flanking the horse, according to The New York Times.

The newspaper said the statue will go to a yet-to-be-designated cultural institution dedicated to Roosevelt’s life and legacy.