ABC ordered to face trial in lawsuit with former 'General Hospital' employees on COVID vaccine mandates
ABC is facing a lawsuit from two former employees of the long-running soap opera "General Hospital" over COVID vaccine mandates, according to a report from Wednesday.
ABC is dealing with legal troubles and "religious discrimination claims" from two former employees who worked for the long-running soap opera "General Hospital," according to a report from Wednesday.
The two former crew members "sued the network after they were fired for refusing the COVID-19 vaccination, marking one of the first rulings to clear the way for trial over terminations caused by blanket vaccine mandates widely imposed by studios amid the pandemic," The Hollywood Reporter revealed.
Per an order shared by the outlet, the two former ABC members, James Wahl and his son, Timothy Wahl, ran the construction shop and special effects department for "General Hospital."
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Judge Stephen Goorvitch in an order on Tuesday found they "may have had ‘sincerely held’ religious beliefs that ABC should have accommodated by affording them exemptions and allowing them to follow safety protocols implemented before mandatory vaccination policies were rolled out."
"After ABC instituted a requirement that its employees get vaccinated against COVID-19, Plaintiffs requested religious exemptions, which were denied," the document, filed Tuesday, reveals.
The lawsuit also claims that ABC violated Article 1, Section 1 of the California Constitution, religious discrimination under FEHA [Fair Employment and Housing Act], disability discrimination under FEHA, retaliation under FEHA and "wrongful termination in violation of public policy."
"ABC argued that the Wahls did not have genuine religious beliefs and that, even if they did, it could not have accommodated them without undue hardship," the Hollywood Reporter wrote, adding the entertainment labor union IATSE "waived any rights members had to object to mandatory vaccination policies."
"Ruling against ABC on summary judgment, the court concluded that the studio may have discriminated against the Wahls on the basis of their religion by failing to find a workaround for their refusal to get vaccinated," the outlet reported.
ABC beat another similar lawsuit from Ingo Rademacher after he was fired from "General Hospital" for declining the COVID vaccine.
The star exited the daytime drama in 2021 after refusing to comply with ABC's mandate requiring show employees to be vaccinated against the coronavirus.
Documents were filed by attorney John W. Howard on behalf of the actor at the time, stating that Rademacher applied for a religious exemption to the mandate but was denied. He was also represented by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who is now running for president as an independent.
"I am entitled to a religious exemption against mandatory vaccination for COVID-19 on the basis of my deeply and sincerely held moral belief that my body is endowed by my creator with natural processes to protect me and that its natural integrity cannot ethically be violated by the administration of artificially created copies of genetic material, foreign to nature and experimental," the actor wrote in an email to Disney's human resources team in 2021, per the suit.
A Los Angeles judge ruled in ABC's favor in 2023, saying the actor's objections to the vaccine were based on health reasons, not religious beliefs.
ABC did not respond to a request for comment from Fox News Digital.
Fox News' Nate Day contributed to this report.
