Employee's vaccination lawsuit against Jacksonville contact lens maker dropped

Steve Patterson, Florida Times-Union
·1 min read
Johnson & Johnson Vision Care, which makes contact lenses at its Jacksonville production facility, shown here in a 2016 photo, was sued in federal court by a Jacksonville employee over his claim of religious exemption from a policy requiring employees to be vaccinated against COVID-19. That case was dropped last week.
Johnson & Johnson Vision Care, which makes contact lenses at its Jacksonville production facility, shown here in a 2016 photo, was sued in federal court by a Jacksonville employee over his claim of religious exemption from a policy requiring employees to be vaccinated against COVID-19. That case was dropped last week.

A Jacksonville man who sued contact lens maker Johnson & Johnson Vision Care over its COVID-19 vaccination requirement for workers has dropped the lawsuit against his employer.

A lawyer for Peter Cerreta, a senior engineer at the company’s Southside operation, went to federal court in October, arguing the requirement would violate Cerreta’s religious liberty protections under the U.S. Constitution.

The lawyer, Jack Andreas Krumbein, filed a voluntary-dismissal notice last week to effectively end the case against the lens maker and its parent company, Johnson & Johnson, which controls the single-shot vaccine chosen by millions of Americans.

Starting in October, employees of the lens maker were supposed to be vaccinated or exempted from that requirement under a set of exclusions the company’s policy allowed.

Before the suit was filed, the business had already approved a short-term “accommodation” for Cerreta through Dec. 8, but the lawsuit asked for a permanent injunction.

Company attorneys asked a judge to dismiss the lawsuit in October, but that request hadn’t been decided before Cerreta’s attorney filed notice that the case was being dropped.

The dismissal notice didn't state any reasons for the action. Neither side responded Tuesday afternoon to requests for comment.

This article originally appeared on Florida Times-Union: Johnson & Johnson Vision employee drops lawsuit over vaccination rule