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

They are not yet publicly available. ask For amnesty many of the policymakers who made mistakes about Covid-19 seem to be more upset than sorry. Many continue to punish their citizens for being wrong. Massachusetts’ state government continues to deny unemployment aid to workers who refuse to receive the Covid-19 booster vaccine or other benefits. 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. One Emmy Patronick made the decision. 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, the DUA unemployment adjudicator, simply overruled all federal and state employment laws by adopting a policy that was more to her liking.

The [unemployment] If the facts prove that the claimant was denied benefits due to medical conditions that prevent vaccination, or because of a deeply held religious belief or that there was no chance to apply or request reasonable accommodation from the employer, the claimant will not be eligible for benefits. If an employer permitted these requests but denied a claimant’s request to be exempted or accommodated, the Adjudicators shouldn’t. “second guess” The employer made the decision.

The Massachusetts employers can give religious and medical exemptions to workers. If they don’t, then the employer may terminate any worker that is in genuine need. Patronick orders that unemployment adjudicators ensure no worker is subject to an employer’s exclusion policies inquiry.

Judges should not be asked to look at medical records that were already reviewed by an employer. If the documentation is insufficient, they will refuse to grant 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. Employees should not be allowed to present documentation or make arguments at Adjudicators’ discretion.

Federal and state laws might be able to disagree with this bureaucratic absurdity. A judge must observe due process at its most fundamental level. He must hear both the arguments of each party and must then make a second decision. 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’ self-serving excuses for workers being fired, or refusing to allow workers. “raise arguments” The employer can then rebut the argument by simply denying the existence of the arguments at the time the employee was fired.

Patronick’s administrative memo illegally excludes Massachusetts employers who comply with their vaccination policies with reasonable accommodations provisions of federal laws, such as Title VII of Civil Rights Act of 64 and Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), also. Patronick instructed her subordinates that they were too dumb to comprehend the laws.

DUA does not include a number of important points. [an equal employment opportunity agency]. Our Judges aren’t qualified or licensed to determine whether an employer is complying with Title VII of Civil Rights Act of 1964 (ADA) reasonable accommodation requirements. [state religious and disability rights laws]Any other EEO [equal employment opportunity] Considerations or requirements that are legal.

Employers take advantage

Patronick’s memo has been received by Massachusetts employers. Soon after the memo was published, in November 2021 my law office began to hear from workers who had refused to have their vaccinations or boosters. Patronick was the one who wrote their termination letters. The employer will always offer exemptions but the worker does not qualify.

I was able to take on several of these workers and have seen their cases slowly progress through the maze of Massachusetts’ unemployment bureaucracy, in order for them to be heard by the adjudicators. For me as an American attorney, these hearings are surreal. It is all rigged. Patronick’s policy limits the power of adjudicators to make one final decision at these hearings: I deny my clients unemployment aid.

If the employer fails to show up for the hearing, then the adjudicators quickly take control and argue against me. They also probe deeply into the religious beliefs of my clients, such as the latter-day bureaucratic Torquemadas to find any heresy that would disqualify my clients. If the employer shows up to the hearing, then the adjudicators act as defense and cross-examine their representative. Our adjudicator yelled at me last week as she tried to convince a woman in human resources into lying. “Stop it!”

This is the result of every case: my client refusing to vacinate is deemed unacceptable “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

Although it may be strange for Americans to see, I find the game rigged to be familiar as a result of my childhood in the Soviet Union’s intellectually bankruptcy 1980s. However 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. Nearly everyone has either one or both.

There are only three reasons why people should be punished for refusing to comply with their employers’ vaccination requirements. They were similar to the ones that drove actions by the Soviet ruling party as the workers’ paradise was stagnant: fear of losing political control by admitting they had been wrong; the desire not to have to compensate the harmed, and plain old resentment at someone who has been 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.