13 Allegheny County workers file lawsuit over vaccine mandate firings

Thirteen former Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, employees are suing the county for denying them religious and medical exemptions from mandatory COVID vaccinations.  

The federal lawsuit maintains that the county violated the terms of an employment contract as well as the First and Fourteenth Amendments when they fired employees who refused to receive the injection by the December 1, 2021, deadline.

The former employees claim the county rejected their applications for exemptions out of hand, despite their submissions of written documents from pastors and physicians. 

For Shane Chesher, one of the terminated employees, the experience was deeply distressing. Chesher worked for the county parks department for eleven years as maintenance foreman at Harrison Hills Park, a recreational area in his home community of Natrona Heights.

After the county denied Chesher's request for a religious exemption and he was subsequently fired, he reflected, “It's been frustrating, it's been angering, it's been disheartening, it's been sad. I've cried, I haven't been able to sleep.”

The lawsuit states that Chesher and the other plantiffs seek compensatory damages both for loss of their jobs and “public humiliation and degradation,” as county workers who refused the injection were required to publicly test for COVID and wear face masks prior to the mandate.

The other twelve plantiffs are Joanne M. King, Andrew Nosbisch, Julia L. Wilner, Thomas Koerbel, Carol Walsh, Dallas Chrestler, Debra Spirko, Jeffrey Simonetti, Karen M. Depkon, Tracy MacAllister, Stacy Poole and Candis Sines-Westerberg. They were terminated from positions in a variety of county departments, including parks, public works, court records, area on aging, human resources, the health department and Kane Regional Center.

Chesher sees this decision to take action as being about something bigger than his own difficult experience: “Luckily, when I'm fighting for freedom, it's for everyone. It's for the people who disagree with me and for the people that do agree with me.”