COURT UPHOLDS DECISION TO DENY WORKER EI BENEFITS

TRIBUNAL DIDN'T HAVE JURISDICTION TO WEIGH IN ON THE LEGALITY OF VACCINE MANDATES AT LAKERIDGE HEALTH, RULING SAYS

A judge has rejected an appeal by a Durham hospital worker who was denied unemployment benefits after being fired for refusing to comply with COVID-19 vaccination requirements.

The ruling, by Federal Court judge William Pentney, states that the agencies that upheld the denial of benefits did not have the jurisdiction to rule on the legality of vaccine mandates challenged by the worker, Anthony Cecchetto. Rather, Pentney found, the Social Security Tribunal and its appeals division could assess the case solely on the question of whether or not Lakeridge Health's decision to dismiss the worker was based on workplace misconduct.

Cecchetto, an employee at Lakeridge since 2017, was affected by a policy adopted by the health network in the fall of 2021 that required all staff, physicians, vendors, volunteers, contract workers and students to be fully inoculated against the virus. Lakeridge reported 95 per cent compliance with the policy at the time.

Cecchetto objected to vaccination, citing his concerns about the safety and efficacy of the relatively new vaccine, according to the ruling. He was placed on unpaid leave in September of 2021 and fired the next month. His application for employment insurance (EI) was rejected, as it was determined he lost his job due to misconduct, the ruling says.

In April of 2022, Cecchetto appealed his dismissal to the Social Security Tribunal, which upheld the decision to deny him benefits. The decision was upheld by the tribunal's appeals division.

Cecchetto then made an appeal to Federal Court, where, representing himself, he argued he'd been subject to discrimination because of the choices he'd made about his own medical care. He also claimed the vaccine mandate amounted to medical coercion, and that he had a right to refuse the shot based on his belief that there had been insufficient testing on the safety and efficacy of the vaccine.

In a ruling released on Jan. 23, Pentney upheld the earlier decisions on Cecchetto's EI eligibility, finding that his concerns about vaccine research and the

merits of the vaccine mandate were "beyond the scope" of the Social Security Tribunal.

The bodies that reviewed the case had a mandate to determine if Cecchetto committed misconduct in refusing to comply with the vaccine mandate — not whether or not the mandate itself was legal, the ruling says.

The entities in question "have an important, but

narrow and specific role to play in the legal system," Pentney wrote. "In this case, that role involved determining why (Cecchetto) was dismissed from his employment and whether that reason constituted 'misconduct.' That is exactly what they did, and the applicant has not put forward any legal or factual argument that persuades me that the ... decision is unreasonable."