‘General Hospital’ Star Ingo Rademacher Loses Lawsuit Against ABC For Wrongful Termination For Refusing To Get Covid-19 Vaccine

In December 2021, soap actor Ingo Rademacher sued ABC for discrimination and wrongful termination after he was fired from General Hospital for not getting the COVID-19 vaccine on “religious grounds.”

This week, a Los Angeles court ruled against him. ABC sought a summary judgment by the Los Angeles Superior Court, which was granted by Judge Stephen Goorvitch for Disney, the parent company of ABC. 

He specifically stated that ABC had wrongfully terminated him, discriminated against him due to his religion, retaliated, violated his right to privacy and other claims against the company.

ABC implemented a policy that all employees were required to be vaccinated, and Rademacher refused to comply. Rademacher had applied for a religious exemption from the policy, but ABC denied his application. 

His religious reasons were that he believed  “that [his] body is endowed by [his] creator with natural processes to protect [him] and that its natural integrity cannot ethically be violated by the administration of artificially created copies of genetic material, foreign to nature and experimental.”

He also specifically cited a book, Revelations of Ramala, but confessed that he did not own a copy of the book and that he hadn’t read it in 30 years. ABC was not convinced by his argument. 

ABC claims Rademacher did not want to get vaccinated due to concerns over his health rather than religious reasons. They argued that Disney had reviewed and examined each request for exemptions thoroughly. 

ABC’s lawyer, Steven Marenberg, wrote in response to the actor’s claims that “Rademacher’s testimony confirms his ‘religion’ is not comprehensive in nature, but focused instead on the issue of not altering one’s/his immune system and ‘do[ing] the right thing’ or simply being a ‘good person.”

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Rademacher played Jasper “Jax” Jacks on General Hospital until 2021 when they replaced him with actor Gideon Emery.

ABC has been sued by two other actors for similar reasons. They also refused to get vaccinated and then were terminated by the company. 

Actor Steve Burton was fired by ABC in November 2021, but he did not sue the company. He got Covid while he was still working on General Hospital but still refused to get vaccinated. He currently works on Days of Our Lives on Peacock.