More than 6,000 federal workers have gotten behind a State Department employee’s effort to challenge the Biden administration’s coronavirus vaccine mandate.
Marcus Thornton, a political officer within the State Department who first came to the government as a Border Patrol agent within the Department of Homeland Security, is the man behind the movement known as Feds 4 Medical Freedom. It is the largest organization of government workers to demand that President Joe Biden walk back his September 2021 executive order that required government workers and contractors to be fully vaccinated by Nov. 22, 2021.
In talking with fellow State employees and Border Patrol agents from his nine years assigned to El Paso, Texas, and Puerto Rico, Thornton realized he was not the only one unwilling to get vaccinated. Of the 4.3 million federal employees nationwide, he assumed many others also were against the mandate.
“We realized that nobody else was standing up for federal employees in court,” Thornton said during an interview. “Usually, this would be handled by the unions, but for whatever reason, this time they’ve chosen to abandon their employees and stand in solidarity with the employer.
“With Border Patrol agents, you think about the fact that over the last two years, with a huge influx of migrants on the southern border that we’re experiencing right now, a large number of those individuals are COVID positive, and so almost all of these agents have been exposed in the line of duty to COVID. Many of them already have had COVID and have acquired natural immunity that way,” he said.
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Thornton and colleagues began calling law firms asking them to take their case. Since the Federal Practice Group in Washington took the case, approximately 2,000 people reached out to Thornton about being represented. He said people emailed daily asking about the lawsuits and how to get involved.
“If they’re ultimately forced to a point where the choice is between their career or being forced to take this vaccination against their convictions, they would give up their careers. And none of us want that,” said Thornton. “All we want is to be allowed to continue to do our jobs the way that we’ve been doing them for the last two years.”
Thornton’s legal efforts were in addition to his 9-to-5 government job. He said he has put in eight to 10 hours each day building up Feds 4 Medical Freedom and responding to inquiries from government employees.
Getting the word out proved challenging. Feds 4 Medical Freedom has largely grown as a result of word of mouth, its website, or through limited media coverage of the lawsuits. Social media and technology companies have censored or banned pages about the organization. Despite this, several thousand Border Patrol agents have joined the group.
Facebook shut down the organization’s page multiple times, though Feds 4 Medical Freedom has successfully appealed the decisions. It also has a profile on Instagram, but it is prohibited from posting advertisements on either platform, which Thornton said severely hurts the organization’s ability to reach key demographics and grow. Thornton said he was told that Feds 4 Medical Freedom’s content “violates community standards,” though the companies have not shared reasoning. PayPal shut down the group’s account for a period and multiple email service providers have dropped them.
“Censorship is never good,” he said. “These are very complicated questions with regards to how we address the coronavirus, and there should be a rigorous public debate on those,” Thornton said. “Unfortunately, right now, that’s not what we have.”
Feds 4 Medical Freedom has been able to raise some money over the past five months to cover legal costs and a public relations firm. The largest donation was less than $2,000. Thornton said no one on the board is getting paid.
The group has filed three federal lawsuits: one in Washington, D.C., by Federal Practice Group, a second in the Middle District of Florida by Federal Practice Group, and a third filed in the Southern District of Texas by Boyden Gray and Associates. Last week, Feds 4 Medical Freedom got its first big win in Texas.
The news could not come soon enough for government workers who have already been terminated or placed on unpaid leave by their agencies. Feds 4 Medical Freedom members had been dealt a variety of disciplinary actions before the Texas court’s decision to impose a nationwide injunction on the order.
Thornton’s ideal conclusion is for the Supreme Court to block the mandate for federal workers and contractors. But he also wants the government to right the wrong.
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“There still has to be accountability for what happened — for the discriminatory actions that were taken against us. And there has to be some assurance that what happened to us will never happen again,” Thornton said. “People shouldn’t have to choose between a private medical decision and their career. Our goal is to make sure that what has happened the last few months never happens again, and [we] will continue advocating until that happens.”
