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Pushback: Baseball scout sues over COVID shot mandate that got him fired

1964 Civil Rights Act arbitrarily voided by the Washington Nationals
1964 Civil Rights Act: Arbitrarily voided by the Washington Nationals

Don’t comply: Bernard “Benny” Gallo, a major league baseball scout for the Washington Nationals has sued the baseball team for firing him when he refused for religious reasons to get COVID shots.

Gallo is being represented by the Thomas More Society, which has taken on a number of these cases and won. From the press release:

Serving his employers faithfully through the first 18 months of the pandemic, Gallo was terminated in late August 2021 after being denied a religious exemption by the baseball club. Gallo is seeking to have his firing reversed, his employment reinstated, backpay awarded, and restitution for the malicious deprivation of his rights. When dismissed by the Nationals, Gallo not only lost his livelihood and his life’s passion of working as a baseball scout, but also his elected position as Vice President of the Southern California Scouts Association, a distinction awarded him by his industry peers.

Thomas More Society Special Counsel Charles LiMandri, partner at LiMandri & Jonna LLP, explained that the Nationals instituted a mandatory COVID-19 vaccination policy on August 12, 2021. The mandate required them to have undergone vaccination by August 26. LiMandri pointed out that the Nationals’ team baseball players were not subject to this policy. MLB union members were encouraged to obtain COVID-19 vaccination, but not subject to the mandate.

“The dismissal of Mr. Gallo and the denial of his request for a religious exemption is discriminatory and unlawful,” detailed LiMandri. “The Nationals continued to employ others – including another scout – who requested and received similar accommodations for medical reasons.”


You can read the actual complaint here [pdf]. It outlines in great and convincing detail how the Nationals violated numerous laws, including the Human Rights Act of the District of Columbia, the 1964 Civil Rights Act, and the 1990 Americans with Disabilities Act. The complaint’s first paragraph however sums up the immoral and illegal behavior of the baseball team quite nicely:

Well-established law prohibits discrimination in the workplace on the basis of religion, race, nationality, or disability. Extraordinary societal or global events such as the covid-19 pandemic do not give employers license to exempt themselves from the law, nor to set aside its provisions based on their own preferences.

The number of these lawsuits is steadily growing. We are also seeing more and more of them successfully resolved in favor of the blacklisted. In fact, in the end it could very well be that the biggest cost experienced by companies due their Wuhan panic will be their illegal treatment of employees, resulting in big payouts due to these lawsuits.

What amazes me is the number of businesses and individuals who, because of their panic over the Wuhan flu, suddenly thought they could completely ignore every civil rights law in existence. They actually believed that their panic allowed them to nonchalantly violate the legal rights of others, willy-nilly, with no cost to themselves.

These thoughtless individuals and businesses are about to find out how completely mindless they had been. While it will be somewhat satisfying to see their comeuppance, overall this whole affair has been tragic, painful, and completely unnecessary. If only these people had put some thought into their actions, rather than allow their emotions to rule.

Genesis cover

On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.

 

The print edition can be purchased at Amazon. from any other book seller, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.


The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
 

"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News

7 comments

  • Concerned

    The main emotion was that of fear for those in charge. Not fear of a virus that many of these head honchos instinctively knew was relatively harmless for the vast majority of their workforce. It was fear of standing up to the higher ups in their corporation or to the government oligarchs holding their money hostage. It was largely complete cowardice from people that only qualify as leaders in name only. I’m completely disgusted with the “leadership” of my company who, like many other bosses all across the land, refused to stand up for their employees’ civil rights and just say no to the unlawful “mandates”. They were happy to just pass the buck and use the full enforcement hierarchy of the corporation to ensure compliance. It was really a bad taste of living under a fascistic state. I hope and pray numerous huge settlements are forthcoming because money is the only thing these sycophantic “leaders” understand.

  • Concerned

    If only these people had integrity and bravery to stand up and do the right thing and protect the civil rights of their employees. Instead almost all of them rolled over and allowed the full enforcement hierarchy of their companies to be used to force the illegal and unconstitutional “mandates”. I hope numerous and gigantic settlements are levied on these people (if possible—that would be true justice), but at least on the companies. Money is the most important thing to these people and financial pain will maybe make them understand.

  • wayne

    On a broader theme–
    the only way to whack down MLB, is to revoke their exemption from the anti-trust laws (Sherman Act)

    Federal Baseball Club V. National League [259 US 200 (1922]
    May 29, 1922

    “…..the Supreme Court ruled that federal antitrust laws did not apply to baseball because, in the mind of Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes and the other eight justices, “the business is giving exhibitions of base ball” is not interstate commerce.”

    So— just remember and let it sink in, not growing wheat effects Interstate Commerce and subjects you to Federal intervention, but having a fully vertically integrated national monopoly on playing baseball, does not.
    Oh… and stadiums are all built with gobs of taxpayer money, and…. look up the “Roster Depreciation Allowance” — allows team owners to depreciate players & their contracts, in a manner unlike any other business.

  • Col Beausabre

    I think you can also depreciate race horses

  • Max

    scout for the Washington Nationals has sued the baseball team for firing him when he refused for religious reasons to get COVID shots.
    Yeah, committing suicide is against my personal religion also…
    Judge forced Pfizer to release documents. As well as some graphs comparing the vaccinated with the unvaccinated.
    https://www.lewrockwell.com/2022/04/joseph-mercola/fda-and-pfizer-knew-covid-shot-caused-immunosuppression/

    Cancer in the vaccinated is off the charts.

    https://healthimpactnews.com/2022/7500-increase-in-recorded-cases-of-cancer-following-covid-19-vaccines/

    “We are seeing, right now, the highest death rates we have seen in the history of this business”.

    https://www.pop.org/insurance-company-raises-alarm-over-unprecedented-spike-in-deathsand-they-dont-seem-to-be-from-covid/

    942 Athlete Cardiac Arrests, Serious Issues, 621 Dead, After COVID Shot
    https://goodsciencing.com/covid/athletes-suffer-cardiac-arrest-die-after-covid-shot/

    The evidence of fraud and malfeasance is overwhelming. Even Elon musk in a recent interview warned of the population decrease is a catastrophic problem. (At 1:03)

    https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=YRvf00NooN8&pp=QAFIAQ%3D%3D

    He also talks about his new product, human robot.

  • Biglar

    Companies and governments had no problem firing anti-vaxxers because liberal HR departments identified these people as being predominantly Republicans, libertarians, and other conservatives. So taking a hard line with anti-vaxxers was seen as an easy way to purge the company or government agency of ideological opponents seen as intolerant and evil. We should see some multi-billion dollar class actions as a result, both in the private and public sectors. All HR departments should be purged of wokeness.

  • George C.

    Baseball players don’t need to get a vax. I saw this with the Redsox road trip to play the Jay’s. Make sense that when you invest hundreds of millions of contract dollars in human bodies and minds that meet top MLB performance standards you would let individuals make the choices according to each body and mind and medical history.

    But in terms of HR legal issues such a different treatment of the well defined elite may be a problem.

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