A Lone Bureaucrat Has Denied Due Process And Unemployment Benefits To Massachusetts’ Unvaxxed

Although they are now public ask Many policymakers wrong on all matters Covid-19 are still more angry than they should be. Many people are busy punishing citizens who have been wrong in their decision to make the right choice. Massachusetts still denies unemployment benefits to any worker who refused to get Covid-19 vaccine boosters and is fired from any government job. The state is refusing to provide unemployment benefits for workers who are not vaccinated or refuse boosters.

My law office represents some of these Massachusetts workers. We have discovered that the decision to punish them for refusing the jab by cutting them out of the state’s social safety net was not made by the state’s legislature, governor, or high court. Emmy Patronick was the one who made it. mid-level Bureaucrat who serves as director of performance and policy for the Department of Unemployment Assistance in the State’s Executive Office of Labor and Workforce Development. A Oct. 14, 2020, report by “interoffice memorandumPatronick simply overruled the federal and state laws governing unemployment claims for DUA workers with a more favorable policy.

It [unemployment] The claimant is ineligible to benefits unless it can be proven that the claimant refused vaccination due to an unfounded medical condition. Judges should deny claims that an employer allowed such requests, even if the claimant requested an accommodation or exemption. “second guess” Employer’s decision.

This means that if a Massachusetts employer provides religious or medical exemptions it may fire any worker who is truly in need of one after going through the deceitful process of pretending to grant one. Patronick ordered that the unemployment claim adjudicators make sure no investigation into an employer’s exemption policy is made for the worker.

Judges should not be asked to look at medical records that were already reviewed by employers and considered insufficient for a medical exemption. Similarly, where an employer — through a review of documentation or an interview, or some other reasonable process — has found that an employee’s professed religious belief either is not sincerely held or does not prevent the employee from being vaccinated, an Adjudicator should not attempt to overturn that decision through paper fact finding. A judge should also not allow employees to make any arguments or submit documents that weren’t made during the dismissal.

Federal and state laws might be able to disagree with this bureaucratic absurdity. An adjudicator at the most fundamental level of due procedure must be impartial. She must listen to both sides’ arguments and second-guess. Both Each of them equally. If they reject to consider Massachusetts unemployment claims adjudicators impartial, it is impossible for them to be impartial. “second guess” Employers making self-serving claims that workers were fired or refusing workers to work “raise arguments” The employer can simply refute the argument by not implying that they were brought up at the time of the firing.

Patronick’s memo to the bureaucrat also exempts Massachusetts employers illegally from complying with federal laws like Title VII of Civil Rights Act of 1964 or the Americans with Disabilities Act. Patronick instructed her subordinates that they were too dumb to comprehend the laws.

DUA, however, isn’t. [an equal employment opportunity agency]. Our Adjudicators do not have the necessary training or authorization to decide whether employers are complying with Title VII of Civil Rights Act of 64, the ADA and reasonable accommodations provisions. [state religious and disability rights laws]Any other EEO [equal employment opportunity] Legal requirements or considerations

Employers Benefit

Patronick’s memo was received by Massachusetts employers. My law firm began receiving calls from employees who refused to be vaccinated and/or boosted in November 2021. This was shortly after Patronick’s memo had been issued. Patronick was the one who wrote their termination letters. The employer will always offer exemptions but the worker does not qualify.

These workers were my clients. Their cases have been slowly progressing through the maze of Massachusetts’ unemployment bureaucracy, to finally be heard by the adjudicators. For me as an American attorney, these hearings are surreal. It is all rigged. Patronick’s policy restricts the adjudicators who preside over these hearings only to one decision: Deny my clients unemployment assistance.

The adjudicators will rush to argue for me against the employer if the employer doesn’t show up at the hearing. I have also delved into my clients religious beliefs like the Torquemadas of the second-day bureaucratic Torquemadas in order to determine a heresy that could disqualify them. If the employer shows up to the hearing, then the adjudicators act as defense and cross-examine their representative. As I tried to coax a lady from the human resources department into telling a story, my adjudicator closed her eyes, and began screaming like a child. “Stop it!”

It always comes down to the same result: The refusal of my client to vacinate is considered a violation. “a knowing violation of a reasonable and uniformly enforced rule” Oder “deliberate misconduct in willful disregard of the employing unit’s interest.” There was no unemployment in my client’s case, with one less unemployed person on the state assistance rolls.

Soviet-style Ruling Class

It may seem strange that Americans experience it, but the rigged games are something I am familiar with as an intellectually bankrupt child from the 1980s Soviet Union. The problem is that necessary While mass Covid vaccination might have appeared in 2021 at first, it’s now widely understood that its benefits as well as naturally acquired immunity can be enjoyed today. indistinguishable. Most people now have one of these or both.

People who resist their employer’s vaccine demands are still punished for the same reasons that drove the Soviet ruling classes actions as workers’ paradise stagnated. These were the fears of losing power by admitting wrongdoing, the need to not have to pay the consequences, and pure resentment of someone being right.

Ilya Föoktistov is an attorney based in Boston who represents victims of Covid-19, cancel culture, and other pandemic responses. He was born in Soviet Siberia.