A religious discrimination/invasion of privacy lawsuit filed against ABC by former “General Hospital” actor Ingo Rademacher — who was fired in 2021 and saw his role recast for opposing the network’s coronavirus vaccine mandate — should not be revived because there is no new evidence to support such a motion, network attorneys argue in new court papers.
Rademacher lost the initial suit in June 2023 when a Los Angeles Superior Court judge found that because ABC also fired actor Steve Burton, who plays Jason Morgan in the series, the network’s decision was based on the health mandate and not on Rademacher’s politics.
However, Burton was rehired in January 2024 and made his reappearance on “General Hospital’ two months later.
“ABC’s re-hiring of Mr. Burton undermines its argument that Ingo’s political beliefs did not play any role in its decision to fire him … in 2021,” Rademacher’s lawyers argue in their court papers filed Dec. 26 in favor of a retrial, adding, “This new evidence is compelling.”
But in court papers brought Monday in opposition to Rademacher’s motion, which is scheduled for hearing Feb. 10, ABC attorneys argue that Burton’s situation has nothing to do with that of Rademacher.
“Mr. Burton was rehired in 2024, years after the end of the COVID-19 global health emergency and at a time when (ABC owner) Disney’s vaccine mandate was no longer in effect,” the network lawyers state in their pleadings. “Thus, his rehiring has no logical impact on (Rademacher’s) claims”
Burton was denied a religious exemption because ABC determined that as an unmasked actor acting on a closed, indoor set in close proximity with other unmasked actors — some of whom were elderly and at risk if they contracted the coronavirus or were too young to be vaccinated– could not be accommodated without undue hardship, ABC lawyers contend in their court papers.
The 53-year-old Rademacher sued ABC in December 2021. He alleged ABC wrongfully denied him a religious exemption and used the employee mandatory vaccination policy as an excuse to fire him. The company made it look like they wanted him to stay, but claimed they could not accommodate him in order to disguise that he was being terminated for other reasons, the actor further alleges.
ABC lawyers argued there were no triable issues in the case and that Rademacher’s religious conviction claims were suspect.
“ABC’s vaccine policy was the product of an extensive deliberative process at (network parent company) Disney,” the ABC lawyers stated. “Senior leaders at Disney and experts in medicine, infectious disease and infection control were part of the process to reach this important decision.”
The vaccination rule required applicable employees to be vaccinated by Nov. 1, 2021, unless they qualified for a religious or medical exemption, which would be considered on a case-by-case basis, the ABC lawyers further stated in their court papers.
In July 2021, Chris Van Etten, the co-head show writer, was considering long-term story plans and identified the plaintiff’s character, tycoon Jasper “Jax” Jacks, as among those characters considered for elimination from the daytime series, ABC attorneys stated.
Although Rademacher filed a request for a religious exemption to the policy in October 2021, during a deposition he admitted that the statements in his written request were either irrelevant or made really no difference to his supposed religious belief, according to the ABC attorneys’ court papers.
“Eventually, Rademacher conceded that he simply put together what he thought would be needed for a religious exemption,” the ABC lawyers argue.
What limited information the actor did provide revealed that his opposition to vaccination was rooted in secular, philosophical/moral beliefs as well as `health or efficacy concerns,” the network lawyers alleged in their court papers.
“To summarize succinctly, at no point did Rademacher mention that his beliefs are based on, related to, or even loosely connected to any religious text or teaching,” the ABC attorneys argued in their court papers.