Former Instructor Sues HMS, Alleges Wrongful Termination for Refusing Covid-19 Vaccine

A former Harvard Medical School instructor filed a lawsuit against Harvard last week, alleging he was wrongfully terminated by HMS because he requested an exception to the Covid-19 vaccine mandate.

James D. Wines, Jr. — who was fired by Mass General Brigham in Nov. 2021 — filed the lawsuit on Nov. 8 in the Massachusetts Superior Court in Norfolk County. In the suit, Wines alleges that around the same time that MGB wrongfully terminated him for refusing to take the Covid-19 vaccine, HMS also terminated Wines without notice or due process.

HMS officials declined to comment on the lawsuit, citing a policy against commenting on pending litigation. However, a spokesperson emphasized that HMS’s affiliation agreements are contingent upon an employee’s status at their home institution, so when a faculty member’s hospital employment is terminated, their HMS appointment ends as well.

“The fact that HMS may have ‘outsourced’ its termination decisionmaking to another party does not immunize HMS from liability for the wrongfulness or discriminatory nature of the termination,” Wines’s attorneys wrote in the suit.

MGB has been sued multiple times over its vaccine mandate since it was introduced in June 2021, when just 243 of 2,400 employees who applied for an exemption received one. More than 100 of these employees — including Wines — filed a class action lawsuit in December 2021 alleging that their exemption denials were a violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act and Civil Rights Act.

Last year, a federal judge partially sided with MGB in the case, deciding that the plaintiffs could not sufficiently prove their disability claims.

In July 2022, Wines split off from the larger lawsuit, hiring his own attorney to take on the case. Two months later, he dropped his attorney to represent himself.

His suit against MGB was dismissed in December 2022 after Wines failed to comply with the discovery process.

According to Friday’s filing, Wines happened to call the Harvard Registrar’s Office on Nov. 10, 2021, when he found out that he had been terminated.

“It does not appear that anyone at Harvard would have even informed Dr. Wines that his appointment had been terminated, had Dr. Wines himself not reached out himself and stumbled upon that information,” the suit alleges.

The filing also claims that Wines “was ‘dismissed for holding controversial opinions, for proposing heretical viewpoints, or for espousing unpopular causes,’” in violation of the HMS handbook.

—Staff writer Veronica H. Paulus can be reached at veronica.paulus@thecrimson.com. Follow her on X @VeronicaHPaulus.

—Staff writer Akshaya Ravi can be reached at akshaya.ravi@thecrimson.com. Follow her on X @akshayaravi22.