Did Repeatedly Nudging Worker to get COVID-19 Vax Make Resulting Injury Compensable?

What Do You Think?

Is an injury from a vaccine compensable even if the employer didn’t require staff to get vaccinated? What if the employer merely encouraged its staff to get vaccinated? Those questions arose in the case of a city worker who developed an autoimmune condition a couple of weeks after getting the COVID-19 vaccine.

The claimant was a water distribution manager for Cedar Rapids, Iowa. When the COVID-19 vaccine first became available, the city sent out a newsletter encouraging employees to get vaccinated and said they could use two hours of work time for a vaccine appointment. It also sent out emails discussing COVID-19's impact on the city's operational capacity. Supervisors discussed the vaccine and the pandemic amongst themselves during management meetings. The claimant said he felt "a little bit of peer pressure" and that he felt he "owed it to [his] department to get vaccinated." 

A former manager described the city's encouragement on vaccines as "a continuous message that was routinely recited, but not overbearing."

The city sent out another email announcing a local hospital was hosting a vaccination clinic open to city employees. Using the hyperlink the city provided, the claimant set up an appointment and got vaccinated. Two weeks later, he woke up to his arm feeling limp and the back of his knees hurting. He was diagnosed with a chronic autoimmune condition that caused his lower body to atrophy, leaving him with mobility challenges.

The court noted that an injury from a non-mandatory vaccine is compensable only if it arises out of employment. The court also remarked that when the inoculation is not strongly tied to employment, it may still arise out of employment if there is a combination of strong urging by the employer and some element of mutual benefit.

Was the manager’s autoimmune condition compensable?

A. No. The city only encouraged staff to get vaccinated.

B. Yes. The various ways the city tried to convince staff to get vaccinated, in combination with the peer pressure, amounted to “urging.”

If you selected A, you agreed with the court in Driscoll v. City of Cedar Rapids, No.  25-1236 (Iowa Ct. App. 08/19/26), which affirmed the lower court’s ruling.

The court stated that even if it applied the “strong urging” standard, the claimant would not have met it. Here, the company encouraged employees. But its efforts never rose to the level of urging them to get the vaccine. The statement by another manager characterizing the city’s efforts as "a continuous message that was routinely recited, but not overbearing,” bolstered that view. Further, the city did not offer a financial incentive for vaccination or a disincentive for those who decided not to get the vaccine. “It only offered a hyperlink to a third-party clinic operated off-site, after the vaccine was available to all adult Iowans,” the court said. 

The court also found that letting staff use their work time to get vaccinated didn’t show the city was urging them to get the vaccine. Finally, while the claimant may have felt peer pressure, that pressure was arising internally; it was not something the city imposed.

The court held that the injury was not compensable.

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