Ingo Rademacher (ex-Jax), a former GENERAL HOSPITAL actor, has won his legal dispute with ABC over his decision to forgo the COVID-19 immunization. The Hollywood Reporter claims that Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Stephen Goorvitch agreed with the network that the actor’s resistance was based more on lifestyle and health considerations than on religious principles.
As previously reported, Rademacher filed a lawsuit against the network back in December 2021, several weeks after he was let go from the soap for refusing to comply with ABC’s COVID-19 vaccination mandate. At the time, Disney had one of the strictest corporate mandates, requiring anyone who worked in “Zone A” of a production — typically the project’s main actors and key crewmembers who work closely with those performers — to be vaccinated against the coronavirus.
In his filing, Rademacher claimed that the mandate violated his right to privacy and that he was entitled to a religious exemption. He also claimed disability discrimination, retaliation, wrongful termination, and violation of privacy. In January of this year, ABC requested that Rademacher’s lawsuit be dismissed, claiming that not only were his beliefs about the vaccine not religious in nature but that his character was probably going to be written out of the soap’s storyline anyway.
Xem bài viết này trên Instagram
Rademacher’s legal team subsequently filed documents in March opposing ABC’s request to have the case dismissed from court, according to Deadline. They argued that the vaccination requirement was a “sham process” intended to hide the fact that the actor’s termination from GH was actually due to the soap’s executives disliking the way he expressed his political views.
Rademacher has not directly commented on the dismissal of his lawsuit. However, he did share an Instagram Story on June 7, reposting an article from Fox News that most U.S. adults are declining COVID boosters as the Center for Disease Control warns of health risks. Along with his sharing the Fox News post in his Story, Rademacher sarcastically added the text “Oops.”
A detailed ruling from Judge Goorvitch is expected in the next several weeks.