Two former “General Hospital” crew members, Jim Wahl and Timothy Wahl, are suing ABC for wrongful termination after being fired for not getting vaccinated against COVID-19. In the suit, obtained by Variety, they claim that “ABC’s actions constitute religious discrimination and violate Plaintiffs’ rights under state law.”
“On Nov. 9, 2021, ABC officially denied Plaintiffs’ requests for religious exemptions to the Covid Vaccine Mandate,” the suit reads. “It gave no reason for its decision, except to say that the company was ‘unable to conclude that you are prevented from receiving the Covid-19 vaccine due to a sincerely-held religious belief, practice, or observance.’”
The suit continued: “Plaintiffs desire a judicial declaration that ABC’s vaccine mandate is unconstitutional because it violates their right to privacy under Article I, section 1 of the California Constitution. This is both a facial and an as-applied challenge.”
ABC and Disney declined to comment on the suit.
This is not the first suit to come from “General Hospital” personnel about the vaccine mandate. In December 2021, cast member Ingo Rademacher also sued after having religious exemptions denied by the network. Rademacher played Jasper “Jax” Jacks on the show for nearly 25 years.
“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,” he wrote in an Oct. 11 email to Disney’s HR department.