Oklahoma Attorney General: St John Ascension “playing games” to avoid obeying restraining order

TULSA — Oklahoma Attorney General John O’Connor says despite a restraining order preventing a large hospital system which does business in Oklahoma from firing employees for refusing to comply with mandatory vaccination against COVID-19, the employer is simply gaming the system by just refusing to schedule the affected employees.

“They are playing games, in my opinion, disrespecting the temporary restraining order that was entered in court on Friday,” O’Connor told KRMG Monday afternoon. “So today we’ve had people, St. John employees, say that even though they weren’t technically suspended, they’ve been removed from the schedule.”

He said Ascension, which is based in St. Louis, is “playing games with paychecks of these employees in order to bully them into getting this deal, and in my opinion, they should obey the temporary restraining order and see what the court says about these religious exemptions that people are claiming.”

You can see our entire interview with Attorney General O’Connor, including a discussion of the controversial Julius Jones case, on the KRMG Youtube page.

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