Can I Collect Unemployment If I'm Fired For Refusing COVID Vaccine?
San Antonio Employment Law Attorney Chris McKinney discusses whether employees in Texas are eligible for unemployment benefits if they are terminated due to their refusal to take the COVID-19 Vaccine.
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Read the TWC’s Letter to Employers
Transcript:
Hi everybody. This is Texas employment lawyer, Chris McKinney. Today, I want to talk to you about a question that we're getting quite a lot from Texans all around the state regarding the implications of COVID mandates and whether or not employees be eligible for unemployment, if they lose their job due to their refusal to accept the COVID vaccine. The Texas workforce commission has issued an opinion letter today, and we're gonna get into it now, importantly, we're not talking today about the propriety or the effectiveness of the COVID vaccine. That's beyond the scope of this video. So I'm not here to tell you whether you should or should not get the vaccine or whether employers should or should not require it. What we're talking about today is solely the issue of how will losing your job as a result of refusing the COVID vaccine affect your ability to you obtain unemployment in Texas.
Okay. So let's talk about that, but before we do go ahead and like, and subscribe the video, if you find this type of information helpful as it sure helps more people find us. Okay. So the as you know, there are dueling vaccine requirements going on in Texas right now, the governor of Texas has issued an order that's executive order, GA-40 requiring that employers not Institute any vaccine mandates in the state and that if they do that, they don't enforce them against those who have who raise any type of religious or medical exemption issues that ruling or that order by the governor is dueling with, of course, the federal orders that are coming out of multiple federal agencies as well, as straight from the desk of the president requiring certain employers to into Institute vaccine mandates or alternatively to require weekly testing.
So as to whether whose mandates are going to win out, ultimately that's going to be thought out and decided in the courts. And we don't have an answer to that yet, but just today, let me share my screen with you just today, Texas workforce commission or I guess it was issued yesterday, but sent out today issued a opinion letter to employers across the state regarding whether or not they should issue vaccine mandates. If they do have mandates, how that would apply to unemployment claims. Now they outline the governor's order and discuss that the governor is telling employers that they should not issue mandates. You know, some, some attorneys question whether or not that's enforceable or not, there certainly isn't a private cause of action. So you can't Sue your employer yet for having a, for violating this, the governor's vaccine anti-vaccine mandate as it were however, in the letter they do go on to state fairly clearly here that it is unlikely that a claimant will be disqualified from receiving unemployment benefits.
If the separation is caused by the employee's failure to receive the COVID 19 vaccin vaccination, now they do put an important caveat in there. They say, although each individual case is different that leaves them some wiggle room for the Texas workforce commission to decide that certain employers in certain contexts, perhaps medical related, I'm not sure they don't really say that there might be some situations in which yeah, it really is legitimate to require vaccination because of the types of work that the employee is going to be doing. We just don't know how that's gonna play out yet, but it does appear that the TWC is taking the general position that if one raises a religious exemption issue or a medical exemption issue, and the employer does not honor that and terminates the employee anyway, then that employee will likely be eligible to receive unemployment benefits. If you have any more questions about this issue or other employment related issues, feel free to visit our website@themckinneylawfirm.com. We have a lot of great information there.
