Horan
PITTSBURGH - Allegheny County has defeated a lawsuit brought by a dental assistant it once employed who never received the COVID-19 vaccine.
Federal judge Marilyn Horan on June 2 entered judgment for the county, which had mandated that employees be vaccinated in 2021, unless they had a good reason for refusing it.
Plaintiff Stacey Poole was worried that the vaccine could complicate her blood-clotting disorder. She asked for an exemption but was rejected and fired on Dec. 11, 2021.
Horan tossed her claims under the Americans with Disabilities Act, Title VII of the Civil Rights Act and the Pennsylvania Human Relations Act on procedural grounds. Horan was required to file a charge of discrimination with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission but never did.
"Instead," Horan wrote, "Plaintiff alleges that she can 'piggyback' on an EEOC charge filed by another Allegheny County employee, Shane Chesher, a pro se plaintiff who filed a charge before the EEOC in a case that Plaintiff was previously a co-plaintiff in, before this Court severed the parties, because the circumstances of each individual plaintiff were too dissimilar."
Poole could have sidestepped the filing of an EEOC charge if she joined a class action but Chesher's case is not one.
Her claim for wrongful discharge was also thrown out for failing to exhaust administrative remedies.
