ORANGE COUNTY, FL - We’ve seen all the news stories over the past few months where liberals are sponsoring laughably-named “No Kings” rallies nationwide, equating the current administration to that of a dictator.
The truth is, we only need to go back five years and find a shining example of what a “king” acts like.
In 2021, former President Joe Biden issued a mandate requiring government employees to wear masks and receive the COVID jab. Many cities, towns, and municipalities nationwide followed suit, including Orange County, Florida. Any company that had federal contracts, including airlines, likewise attempted to force its employees to comply with these mandates.
Stephen Davis was a battalion chief with Orange County Fire Rescue. Despite many of his firefighters having religious and medical exemptions, Davis was ordered to reprimand them for failing to get vaccinated, even though they had filed for and received those exemptions. When Davis defended those employees and refused to write them up, he was terminated just days before Christmas.
In response, Chief Davis filed a lawsuit alleging retaliation. Initially, his lawsuit was dismissed by the district court in Florida. Davis appealed to the Eleventh Circuit Federal Court of Appeals and received a reprieve.
The case was remanded to the district court, which again found that he had not engaged in statutorily protected activity. Davis again appealed to the Eleventh Circuit, which found that Davis hadn’t engaged in statutorily protected activity and that the circuit court didn’t abuse its discretion by denying him leave to amend. The appeals court upheld the district court’s judgment.
In essence, the court found that his retaliation claim against Orange County didn’t rise to the level of "imposing harm respecting an identifiable term or condition of employment."
Davis alleged in his lawsuit that by issuing written reprimands to employees for failure to get the COVID jab despite them having religious or medical exemptions, the employees would be adversely affected. A MOU between Orange County and the firefighters union “stated that the reprimands could not be considered or used in a union member’s performance evaluation, and that no further disciplinary action could be taken against employees who didn’t file a timely vaccination certificate or exemption request.” The appeals court “didn’t rise to the level of an adverse employment action, and a future employment action couldn’t be based on them.”
This would seem to be beside the point. In their own opinion, it mentions failure to “file a timely vaccination certificate or exemption request.” The fact was that the firefighters in question had fulfilled that requirement (filing a “timely…exemption request”).
Davis further argued in his suit that he was fired for protecting the First Amendment religious freedom rights of his subordinates, and that he was disciplined not only for the reprimands but also due to a hostile work environment caused by the vaccine policy.
Unfortunately, the appeals court “held that an issue not raised in the district court and raised for the first time in an appeal will not be considered by this court.”
Law Enforcement Today spoke with Davis, who said the mayor of Orange County issued a directive that all county employees would be forced to submit to the COVID vaccination by October 1 or face discipline up to and including termination.
“So, a lot of firemen came out…it was about 400 of us that basically went against it…that’s not what we want,” Davis said. “We’d gotten our union involved… the union never really came through.”
“So, after several months of fighting it, he [the mayor] did come back and say, ‘Hey, I’m going to change it down to just discipline instead of termination.’ It will be a written reprimand, is how they worded it.”
Davis said he returned to work in early October and was provided with a list of people he would have to issue written reprimands to. He was told that anybody who didn’t get vaccinated would be forced to do a COVID test.
“They would have to submit to the COVID nasal swab,” Davis said.
The first problem with that, Davis said, was that the COVID tests at the fire stations had all expired.
“So I was fielding calls all morning regarding these. ‘Hey, how do you want us to utilize these testing kits? They’re all expired.’
“So when I requested more information from my supervisor, they basically just blew it off and said, 'Just have them do it anyway.’ I said okay, well, you’re going to have me have my guys use testing kits that are expired?"
“I mean, we wouldn’t do this to our patients. Why would we do that there?”
Davis said that as he was going through the list, he saw some names on the list of firefighters whom he personally knew. Davis said one was a friend of his, who came through the fire service together and had been promoted as lieutenants together. He had personally asked this friend how to fill out a religious exemption.
“And he had gone to the firehouse and had shown me how he did it. So I essentially copied and pasted, verbatim, word for word, [the language from] his religious exemption.”
“My name wasn’t on the list, but his was, along with many others who had either a religious exemption or a medical exemption. It should have been on their vaccination card. So after that, I ended up going through my supervisor, you know, what my findings were.”
Davis was told to just “write them up–let them grieve it.”
“So, I refused it. She sent me home, suspended me for two weeks, and then I was terminated just shortly after that,” Davis explained.
“And that was essentially because I refused to discipline people; my justification was that I’m not going to write people up if they have a religious exemption or medical exemption or if they’ve actually done the right thing. I said, we can look at the list, you know, look at these people and get that list corrected, and then I will, you know, issue discipline where it needs to be,” Davis continued.
LET clarified with Davis that the county had granted religious and medical exemptions, yet they still wanted him to discipline those who had refused to get the COVID jab on that basis.
Davis also explained that he had submitted public records requests for those who had been disciplined for refusing the jab and who had been granted exemptions. One individual, Dan, told Davis that he had not been disciplined. Yet Davis found a written reprimand in his employment records. Yet according to Dan, he was never notified that a letter of reprimand had been placed in his file.
Davis said that, to his knowledge, he was the only public employee in the state of Florida who was terminated over this.
Davis said in the department’s policies that if the issuance of discipline falls under a non-emergent direct order and someone believes such an order is unlawful, whether under a county ordinance, state law, or federal law, an employee has the right to refuse.
“So that’s what I stood by. And I knew the rules. I knew the policies. So that’s essentially what I had stood by my entire time, that, you know, there’s a policy. I believe this to be unlawful; it’s no different than you in a fire scene. If you were my fireman and I’m your lieutenant. We get done fighting the fire, and I go, " Hey, go take that TV off the side of the wall. I say, ‘Let’s get it, it’s not damaged. They’re not going to know, going to think it’s damaged, that it got destroyed in the fire. Let’s go grab it.’ That’s unlawful; then I go back to the station and say I’m going to write you up. That’s an unlawful order, and it can be refused.”
Davis then related that he believes Orange County is very corrupt. He related that a judge in his first case had a son who was a paramedic with Orange County Fire Rescue, who allegedly assaulted a patient who was restrained on a stretcher, striking him five times. He said he had bodycam footage of the assault; however, it was swept under the rug.
Davis was able to get him recused from the case.
Davis told LET that he believes he is at the end of the road with his case. He could have requested an en banc review, where his case could have been heard before the entire appellate circuit rather than the three-judge panel, but it doesn’t seem that he’ll go that route.
Davis explained that he wasn’t an anti-vax zealot.
“I was like, if you wanted the COVID vaccine, go ahead and get it. I’m not,” Davis said.
Davis did say he has some concerns about the vaccine schedule, especially when children are given multiple vaccines at a very tender age. He said his experience with the COVID shots led him to ask more and more questions.
He then related a story that shows the absolute insanity we lived through during the height of the COVID hysteria.
He was speaking to a fellow firefighter from another department who had flown to Africa with his wife to adopt a child. They were out of the country for several months and had no cell service, no internet, and no access to the United States whatsoever. He arrived back in the US, and on his first shift back, he got written up because he didn’t get the jab or turn in an exemption. Never got an email, never was contacted by a supervisor, but got written up. Despite being told the reprimand had been removed from his file, a public records request showed it was still there.
Fortunately for Chief Davis, he has landed on his feet and, in 2024, published a book outlining his story, Alone in the Fire: The First Alarm. The memoir outlines his journey from serving as a medic in the United States Army to his time with Orange County Fire Rescue and his fight against the COVID bureaucracy.
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