Ingo Rademacher Loses His Lawsuit Against ABC
The legal battle between former GENERAL HOSPITAL star Ingo Rademacher (ex-Jax) and ABC over his refusal to get the COVID-19 vaccination has come to an end. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Stephen Goorvitch agreed with the network that the actor’s opposition was not based on religious beliefs, but rather on health reasons and lifestyle choices.
As previously reported, Rademacher filed a lawsuit against the network back in December 2021, several weeks after he was let go from the soap for refusing to comply with ABC’s COVID-19 vaccination mandate. At the time, Disney had one of the strictest corporate mandates, requiring anyone who worked in “Zone A” of a production — typically the project’s main actors and key crewmembers who work closely with those performers — to be vaccinated against the coronavirus.
In his filing, Rademacher claimed that the mandate violated his right to privacy and that he was entitled to a religious exemption. He also claimed disability discrimination, retaliation, wrongful termination, and violation of privacy. In January of this year, ABC requested that Rademacher’s lawsuit be dismissed, claiming that not only were his beliefs about the vaccine not religious in nature but that his character was probably going to be written out of the soap’s storyline anyway.
Per Deadline, Rademacher’s legal team then filed paperwork in March opposing ABC’s motion to have the case tossed out of the court — claiming that the vaccination requirement was a “sham process” to cover up the fact that that the real reason the actor was terminated from GH was that the soap’s executives objected to his expression of his political views.
Rademacher has not directly commented on the dismissal of his lawsuit. However, he did share an Instagram Story on June 7, reposting an article from Fox News that most U.S. adults are declining COVID boosters as the Center for Disease Control warns of health risks. Along with his sharing the Fox News post in his Story, Rademacher sarcastically added the text “Oops.”
A detailed ruling from Judge Goorvitch is expected in the next several weeks.
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