A federal lawsuit has been filed by John Pierce Law in the Southern District of Florida against Atlas Air on behalf of Atlas employees and US Freedom Flyers (USFF) over the vaccine mandates. The law firm has announced plans to sue 18 major airlines, as well as the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and the Department of Transportation (DOT), over the vaccine mandates imposed by the agencies, contending they infringed on the constitutional, religious, and medical freedoms of airline employees.
As government contractors, airlines were impacted by President Biden’s September 9 executive order that required certain federal contractors and subcontractors to implement Covid-19 workplace safety measures, including a vaccine mandate with no “testing” option.
According to CBS News, airline employees that previously held out against obtaining the Covid vaccines “changed course as they risked losing their jobs,” something that should never have happened, according to the lawsuit.
“Fundamentally, this case is about whether Americans should be required to choose between their livelihoods and being coerced into taking an experimental, dangerous medical treatment,” reads the lawsuit.
Noting that pilots are already subjected to rigorous physical requirements in order to maintain their licenses, the lawsuit contends that the vaccine mandates pose health risks to otherwise-healthy workers:
It is also about the safety of America’s airline industry. Should pilots — under federal regulation required to be among the healthiest workers in the United States — who have taken an experimental “vaccine” that is now shown to have potentially deadly, long-term side effects, be allowed to fly massive aircraft in our skies? While those who have (smartly) refrained from such a course be forced out of their jobs?
Josh Yoder, an airline pilot and a spokesperson for Freedom Flyers, told The Epoch Times that there has been harassment, threats, intimidation, vaccine injuries, and even “suicides that have come out of these mandates.”
“And then, in addition, we have the vaccine-injured, and the numbers of vaccine-injured are growing by the day,” Yoder added, “It’s just incredible what’s happening with pilots.”
According to The Epoch Times, Robert Snow, a pilot for American Airlines, recently suffered a cardiac arrest within minutes of landing a plane from Denver to Dallas Fort Worth (DFW) on April, an incident he attributes to the Johnson & Johnson Covid vaccine he was forced to take in order to keep his job on November 4, 2021. Snow said he already had natural immunity from having contracted the virus. Renowned cardiologist Dr. Peter McCullough told Newsmax that Snow’s case is likely to have been “vaccine-induced myocarditis.”
“And so what we’re seeing is many pilots are experiencing health conditions,” Yoder said. “Specifically, cardiac issues [are] what we’re seeing a lot of. And many of these pilots are afraid to come forward because if they come forward they lose their flight physical, they lose their flight medical. So they’re continuing to fly. We have a lot of pilots that are flying with chest pain and neurological conditions, because if they come forward they lose their careers.”
According to The Epoch Times, Atlas Air is the world’s largest operator of the Boeing 747 aircraft and one of the industry’s large cargo carrier companies. John Pierce Law announced intentions to file another lawsuit against United Airlines this week.
“We’ll be hitting basically all of them in sequence, and then we’ll be going after the FAA as well. We’re gonna get these vaccine mandate type of rules and COVID restrictions ruled unconstitutional. And we’re gonna get findings that there was discrimination under Title Seven. We’re gonna get punitive damages for intentional infliction of emotional distress and things like that,” Pierce said.
Pierce contends that the vaccine mandates will ultimately have to be resolved through legislation, but states the “first step is civil litigation.”
Yoder explains they decided against filing a class-action lawsuit because they wanted to ensure that they represented the wide variety of harm the mandates have caused. The unvaccinated have suffered from repeated harassment, he observes, while the vaccinated were forced to obtain the vaccine under coercion.
There are nearly 200 plaintiffs named in the lawsuit. Demands in the lawsuit include compensatory and punitive damages, relief from any further Covid-related mandate or restrictions, and attorney fees.
