‘General Hospital’ Vet Ingo Rademacher Hits ABC With “Religious Discrimination” Suit Over Covid Vaccine Mandate

Dominic Patten
·2 min read
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Mere weeks after Ingo Rademacher was pink slipped from General Hospital by ABC for not getting a Covid-19 vaccination, the actor has jabbed the Disney-owned network with a wide-ranging civil rights lawsuit on constitutional grounds.

“ABC’s actions are blatantly unlawful,” proclaims a jury trial seeking complaint filed today in LA Superior Court by the law firm of JW Howard Attorneys, LTD. “ABC does not have the authority to force a medical treatment to its employees against their will,” the filing goes on to say (read it here). “These actions constitute religious discrimination and violate Mr. Rademacher’s rights under state and federal law.”

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Long story short, if you’re not the biggest fan of the goings on of Port Charles, New York, the House of Mouse has one of the strictest vaccine mandates of any Hollywood studio and most major corporations. Now facing political challenges, to put it politely in Florida, Disney made having vaccination mandatory in late July for salaried and non-union hourly U.S. employees who worked at it is studios, networks, theme parks, and more.

A GH regular on and off since Bill Clinton was POTUS, Rademacher sought a religious exemption from the vaccine mandate from his corporate overlords. After sitting down with the actor who played Jasper Jacks for decades, ABC decided on November 5 to deny Rademacher his desired exception .

Less than month later, the actor and his character were gone from the small screen. Rademacher had already been on the outs with some of his cast mates for remarks he made on social media earlier this year about on transgender people – comments he later edited and apologized for.

If you aren’t getting where this is all coming from, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris’ names are bandied about the suit filed Monday. Terms like “bodily integrity” and the right to “informational privacy” are in there too. In the end, Rademacher wants “ABC’s Covid-19 mandate declared unconstitutional” and he’s seeking compensatory damages for all the wages he’s lost out on for being shown the GH door.

Though they will likely react in the LASC docket soon enough, ABC parent company Disney did not respond today to request for comment from Deadline on the Rademacher suit. TMZ first reported the filing.

Also worth noting that while President Biden’s vaccine edict is being bogged down in the courts across the land, the New York Supreme Court turned down emergency requests by Empire State healthcare workers for a religious exemption from state requirements to vaccinate against Covid-19. A federal appeals court in New York previously denied the workers’ requests.

Greg Evans contributed to this report

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